Monster Oddyssey
by Gamerex27
Summary: 201X. A young man finds himself trapped in an underground kingdom of monsters. Naturally, he wants to get back home, but...what's up with this ghost following him? What was that about the human SOULs escaping? As they become ever more entangled in a conspiracy of Stands and sorcery, Joseph and his new friends will need everything they've got to survive, much less save the world.
1. Ch 1: A Clash in the Cold!

A skeleton sits awkwardly at his sentry station, impatiently tapping a foot against the snowy ground. He looks left, than right, his bones rattling slightly as he shifted in place. Though he wasn't as sensitive to the cold as some of the other inhabitants of the snowy region of the Underground, it was still a bit too chilly for his taste. Even his battle body didn't help.

Perhaps it would conduct the heat better if he'd constructed it out of real metal and chain links rather than paper maché and masking tape, but it _was_ better than nothing.

"Shouldn't he _be_ here? He blazed through all my other puzzles so quickly! He's clever. _Very_ clever."

This is the point where he would have added "But not as smart as ME, the great Papyrus!" or something similar, but, in an unusual turn for the skeleton, he was deep in thought, not even talking.

Of _course_ he still wanted to capture the human, he told himself: otherwise, how was he going to get into the Royal Guard? That seemed to be the only thing that would convince Undyne to let him, since everything from his bountiful gifts of precious bones to hand-crafted puzzles on her front lawn seemed to have failed.

And yet…the human seemed much more affable than he'd expected. They weren't some kind of walking engine of destruction like the legends said: they had fun with his puzzles, made terrible jokes _almost_ as bad as his brother, and he hadn't killed any monsters that Papyrus had seen.

He pictured his fri- _foe_ in his mind's eye, trying to calculate where best to strike and KO him. Tall, muscular, wearing shockingly minimal clothing for the cold of Snowden, and with a tricky glint in his eye.

Wait. That wasn't his _mind's_ eye he saw him in.

" _Ah!_ Human!" Papyrus shouted in surprise, stumbling out of the sentry booth and to his feet.

"You know…I _told_ you I have a name," the human said irritably. He adjusted his scarf, and half considered going back to town to see if that rabbit sold a coat or something. He was almost freezing his ass off by now.

He paused in the middle of further buttoning his shirt, frowning in exaggerated concentration, and leaning to the side to try and see something over Papyrus's shoulder.

Papyrus turned to look at-

"No! I _won't_ fall for that again! I have a speech to make to you!" Narrowing his eye sockets, Papyrus turned back and glared at the human mid-dash, having moved halfway across the battlefield-to-be in the span of a second.

"Eh. It was worth a shot," he grumbled, his half-hearted look-over-there plan having failed as expected.

A thorned vine snaked out of his sleeve. His eyes shot down to it, but didn't try to shake it off as they had the other three or so times it had shown up that day. Instead, he held out his arm, the oddly-colored plants extending outward the length of his ulna.

"Still have no idea what this…eh, it can wait," he muttered, noting how the vines vanished into thin air when he decided he didn't need them. Had he figured out how monsters used magic for himself?

If so, why, then, did the library say magic was projected from the body?

Sleeves this one time aside, when it had started appearing throughout the day, the vines came from behind him.

As if some _one_ was standing beside him.

"Now, I think I was at the start…I…Actually, hold the speech. While we have been waging our battle of wits, I have observed some complex feelings. On your end."

"Really?" The human rifled through his pack, only paying half attention to Papyrus.

"It's so very clear to me! The joy you felt upon meeting another pasta lover! The admiration of another's puzzle-solving skills! The desire to have a cool, smart person think you are cool! These-"

"Let me guess. Next, you'll say 'these must be the feelings _you_ are feeling right now!'"

"-These must be the feelings _you_ are feeling right now!" Papyrus paused briefly, upon realizing the human had predicted his exact words. "Ah! Great minds _do_ think alike!"

"Not to be an asshole about it," they said, "but I think I _know_ where this speech is going." The tall human's stomach growled. Pulling out a small paper bag, they unwrapped the small bunny-shape pastry and casually bit off the ears. "So let's skip the pretentious crap, shall we?" he finished, in between mouthfuls of delicious baked goods.

"So you _do_ have these feelings!" Papyrus cried, the human's meaning flying right over his head. "Of course…I knew that already. I am very great. I never have…those…feelings!"

Barely stifling a yawn, Papyrus pulled out a small bone and began fanning himself with it. In spite of Snowden's cold environment, he felt like things were heating up. Obviously, the human was so embarrassed at being so transparent that his blushing was warming up the entire region. Or something: while Papyrus considered himself a very smart skeleton, even he had to admit his knowledge of human biology was limited.

It was making him feel a little big fatigued, but he continued on in spite of his sapping strength. Papy-the _human_ needed to hear this.

"Your loneliness is…clear to me! I, the Great Papyrus, will be your-"

"Friend?" the human finished. "Look, I don't mind a little chit-chat, but I need to get going." He looked left, then right, as if he were getting ready to cross a busy street. While Papyrus was still the midst of his moral dilemma, he chose this time to quickly walk past him. "If I don't make it back to the surface soon, my Granny will-"

He was cut short when a wall of bleached bones manifested itself in his path. The human only barely froze in place before the energy humming off the magical constructs struck him square in the face. He could hear the edge of his scarf sizzling as he jumped backward from the wall.

"No…no, this isn't how it's supposed to go!" Papyrus cried, vigorously shaking his head as he pushed back that last word. "I can't be your friend! You're a human!"

"…Really?" the human groaned, looking right at Papyrus now. "Alright, look. It's clear you're not _interested_ in fighting me, so I'll just skip by and-"

"I…must capture you!" the skeleton declared, trying to ignore the human's conflicted feelings and continue through the stations of his speech.

"…son of a _bitch_ ," the human said. "There goes the easy way out. Let's get it _over_ with, then."

"Then, I, the Great Papyrus…" Papyrus's eye sockets briefly shrank, as if his nonexistent eyelids drooped half-shut. "Okay, fine! We can skip the speech! I am _determined_ to capture you, human!" he continued, shaking in place and rattling his bones to regain his energy. He wiped the sweat from his brow, and got into a fighting stance.

"Alright, fine! Guess I'll just have to kick your ass 'till I get through! Before I win, though, I'll tell you my name _again_. I _have one_ , so don't forget it again!"

He sighed ,and adjusted his scarf to protect from the cold, briefly revealing the star-shaped birthmark on his shoulder in the process.

"It's Joestar. Joseph Joestar. Bring it, you bag of bones!"

* * *

 **Monster Oddyssey**

 **A crossover between JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Undertale**

 **Written by Gamerex27, proofread by Coiler**

 **Chapter 1:**

 **In which a friendly brawl gets _way_ out of hand, our hero harnesses the power of shrubbery, and Papyrus is undone by his own culinary tastes.**

* * *

Both men dropped into a fighting stance: Papyrus calling forth a bone club and producing a bag of smaller bones from seemingly nowhere in his other hand, while Joseph simply balled his fists and focused on the monster.

 _He looks about as strong as Toriel. Sans_ did _warn me about some blue attack…but he's not trying to kill me. Which means he_ can't _kill me. Which means_ , Joseph finished, smirking, _I can afford to have some fun._

"Nyeh heh h _uuuuuuuuwh_ -" Papyrus quickly brought his arm up to cover his yawn. Why _was_ he so tired, anyways? Did Sans go to all the trouble of learning a sleep spell just to annoy him in this moment of glory?

"You know, you really shouldn't fight if you're so _bone weary_."

The skeleton instantly snapped to attention. "No."

Joseph's smirk widened. "I mean, you _could_ just take it easy. This isn't a fight to the death, right? It isn't some **back-breaking** labor here."

"Oh, _no!_ Stop that!...that last one barely had anything to do with bones!" Papyrus swung the club through the air, creating and discharging a small animal's worth of bones at his foe.

"You're _smiling!_ ," he replied, sidestepping the projectiles and leaping atop the branches of a nearby tree to avoid a second volley. "Guess your brother was right-you _do_ like those puns!"

He paused. "Though, come to think of it, you're _always_ smiling, aren't you? Well, guess it's true what they say. Fake it until you make it!"

"Human! Please take this battle seriously!" Papyrus demanded, rummaging in his bone bag.

"Well, if you insist on that, why don't you take your own advice!" The human smacked the branches of the trees, causing the mass of snow piled on them to fall and knock another set of bones out of the air. "Let's see that [Blue Attack] I've heard so much about!"

"Very well!" Papyrus exhaled, and his hands and club glowed a dark blue. Flailing in the air with his weapon, he conjured yet another set of flying bones, these ones glowing light blue.

But Joseph had dealt with these kinds of spells before earlier today. He stood still as a statue, and Papyrus's attack washed over him harmlessly.

"Really?" Stretching, Joseph pointed down at Papyrus in a mocking manner, as if he was ready to burst out laughing. "That's your famous att-"

He was cut short by a sudden impact to his gut, and a faceful of snow. Gasping in surprise, he struggled to right himself on the branch.

Oh, wait, he was on the ground now. Papyrus must have somehow yanked him off the tree when he wasn't paying attention. Basic tactics, but he _was_ cleverer than Joseph initially thought.

" _That_ is my [Blue Attack]," said Papyrus, wiping the sweat of exertion off of his vertical plate. "Oh, I see! You got the shades of blue magic confused! A natural mistake!"

Joseph rolled his eyes and stood up.

No, he _stood up_. Stood u-why was it so hard to _move?_ Grunting in pain, the human was barely able to get back to his feet. It was as if suddenly had huge weights strapped to every part of his body.

He looked down at himself, and blinked in surprise. His skin had taken on a blue tint, as if he were holding his breath and about to pass out.

"Dark blue increases gravity, and limits your movement!" Papyrus said, proudly. "Do you like it? The darker shades of blue aren't used too much, so its near-uniqueness multiplies my cool factor by tenfold!"

"Alright, it _is_ impressive," Joseph admitted, wincing as his foe readied his club again. "With me stuck to the ground, it'll be harder to dodge your attacks.

"But," he continued, wrenching his heavy body into a roll to avoid the now much more dangerous bone waves, "there's still plenty of cover here! This sentry station will do _nicely!_ "

"Darn you!" the skeleton shouted melodramatically, shaking his fist and sounding much more camp than he intended. "I'm not going to smash up my own station!"

"I'll come out if you give me a second to catch my breath!"

"Oh! In that case, take your time!" the skeleton responded. Secretly, _he_ also needed the break. Some spaghetti would do wonders to have a cooler and better fight.

A spectral arm emerged from behind the monster, a bowl of undercooked and oversauced spaghetti in its hand.

"Thank you, stranger!" Papyrus said, slurping up the noodles without a moment's thought. Or even noticing _where_ they had come from.

* * *

On the other side of the field, Joseph stuffed the last of the rabbit into his mouth, sighing in relief as his bruises and cuts vanished in seconds. Say what you will about monsters getting the short end of almost every other stick, but their cooking was _great_.

"Can't say I expected _this_." He wracked his brain, but he came up very short on how to counter the dark blue gravity power of his foe. It looked like the spell was still in effect, and he had no idea how to undo magic. Sort of came with the territory of falling down and going through all this in the span of two days, really.

If Joseph could just hit Papyrus with his own spell, he would be just as disabled as he was, and it would be smooth sailing from there. Or finding some _other_ way to hit him, without having to get close to him and thus waste energy.

"I wonder…" What about the vines that kept showing up near him? Those might help. He concentrated, eyes narrowed and inhaling deeply.

"Whatever you are, now's a good time to show up. Monster, ghost, magic…I don't know what you are. But as long as you show up now-"

The air around Joseph began to shimmer, and vines snaked their way out from under his shirt and out through his sleeves.

" _Great_!" He grinned.

"Human?" Papyrus's voice called, concerned. "If you'd like, we could take a short break. I have a refreshing, cold can of cola! Since I started our battle, I must allow you some advantage to be fair!"

Slowly, Joseph's head rose over the station desk's top, and stared in disbelief at Papyrus. "Hah! No way I'm falling for that!"

"Er…what?" Papyrus tilted his head in confusion, some more beads of moisture falling from above his eye sockets. "Oh! You must be worried about the _kind_ of soda! Fear not: I, the Great Papyrus, wouldn't lower myself _or_ others to drink diet cola! As with all those as _cool_ as me, I have _zero-calorie cola!_ All the taste, none of the…whatever makes diet soda taste awful!"

"Oh…my…God," Joseph muttered to himself. "He's _serious_. Well, won't look a gift horse in the mouth," he said, raising his voice so the skeleton could hear it. "Alright, toss it here and we can take a break before I'll kick your ass!"

Stretching his arm back, Papyrus hurled the can through the air with all of his might. It made it all of ten feet before plopping unceremoniously to the ground.

Both men were silent for a moment.

Wordlessly, Joseph willed the vine by his hand to grab the can. Carefully, so as not to prick it with its thorns and waste his prize, the vine brought the can to Joseph, and he eagerly popped it open.

"Fear not! My blue attack is holding steady, so this fight will be over soon!" Papyrus opened his mouth to continue, but another yawn sneaked into his speech. "Huff…huff…this was a long, memorable battle!"

"It's been three minutes!" Joseph objected, noting how the vines were now extending behind him, attached to a spectral purple and gold arm.

The vine from the other arm brushed against the wooden wall of the stall, and it _changed_. In an instant, it took on a metallic shine and texture. It still retained its shape and structure, but its properties…

He touched the wall, and then grabbed the can from the other vine. They felt the same. Light, frail, and easily crushed. Whatever this thing was…could it somehow force different objects to have the same traits?

Joseph pushed himself to his full height, against the restrictive curse's power, and grinned. He was a _wonderful_ idea.

* * *

As Joseph discovered this strange new ability, Papyrus found himself in a similarly bizarre situation.

His vision blurred, and he shook his head to clear his eyesocketsight. He _really_ hoped the human would finish their break soon. He hadn't been this _tired_ in…ever, really.

He wiped more perspiration off of his brow.

"Hurry up! I _have_ to beat you, or I'll never be able to make any friends!"

Wait, that came out wrong. It wasn't what he actually meant. He thought.

He dismissed his club and raised both of his hands to cup around his jaw and get the human to hurry. But, halfway to his face, he noticed the liquid on his hands.

It wasn't sweat. It was a milky white, as pale as his own bones.

Papyrus scratched his forehead in confusion, then yelped as a spike of white-hot pain pierced his mind. Slowly, and with more caution, he tapped his forehead again. It left oddly…soft. As if that part of his body had turned to oatmeal. Or melting ice cream.

He felt something wet land on his shoe. His hand had begun dripping as well.

"Er…human? Could you…"

"Alright? You want to finish this? I will!"

"ARO!"

The wall of his precious sentry station, which he had spent precious…minutes…building suddenly split open with a gaping hole, as if someone had taken siccors to a soda can's frail aluminum casing.

The human stepped out of the hole, and a titan about nine feet tall followed. Its muscular golden limbs further ruined the station as it passed through. The purple vines snaking through its body, as if woven into its flesh, writhed and brimmed with life. Papyrus saw its steely gaze lock eyes with him from underneath its wide-brimmed hat.

"Oh, you…brought a friend?" Papyrus asked. "Well, then I'll use my strongest…wait, no, that's dangerous!...I'll…just use this normal one instead."

With a herculean final effort, Papyrus created a vast line of tall bones, much bigger than Joseph would have been able to jump over or dodge even without the blue curse.

"Not this time," the human said, smirking. "This time, I'll make those bones _break!_ NOW!"

"ARORA!" Whipping its free arm out, the vines spring out of the figure's limb and launched its thorns at the bones. A series of soft _thwacks_ echoed as the thorns hit their marks, and became stuck in the calcium constructs.

"My bones are…too sturdy to be broken by those tiny thorns!" Papyrus announced, trying to ignore that his vision was beginning to blur. "Don't worry; you'll be fine!"

"Oh, is it me you're worried about?" Even with the crushing weight of the blue curse bearing down on his body, Joseph still found the strength to lift his hand to the air, pointing at Papyrus despite the magically-imposed gravity ruining the gravitas of the victory celebration he had intended. "You don't get it? Then I'll explain."

He shifted his hand to point at the bones, now mere feet from his body. Which now possessed a metallic sheen "I've already won."

The plant-like figure rushed forwards, swinging its fists faster than any mortal eye, human or monster, could follow.

"ARORORORORORORORA!" In the span of a few seconds, the bones having taken on the consistency of a soda can, were blown into useless chunks of scrap metal and powdered dust.

Papyrus stared in disbelief.

Joseph stared back, the blue curse fading as his body's coloration returned to normal.

"Well…you won," Papyrus said, slumping to his knees in exhaustion.

"I had to admit, that was one of the toughest fights I've ever had," Joseph said, approaching his defeated foe cautiously as the phantasmal figure faded behind him. "Those bones were too strong to counter head on. But, with that magic…or, whatever it is…I've discovered, I gave those bones the same consistency as the drink you so kindly gave me. And if any average Joe could crush a soda can with their bare hands, well…"

Joseph trailed off. "Wait…are you _melting?_ "

"It seems that I am." Papyrus announced, "Alas, poor Papyrus-"

"Wait…no… _OH_ _NO_! I didn't mean to _kill you!_ " Joseph interrupted, his voice rising in panic and obvious distress.

"-cut down in the prime of my life," he continued, shockingly blasé about how he was _dying_. "I only fought because I'd hoped people would be my friend for-"

"No, _nononono!_ " Joseph knelt to the ground, holding his hand to Papyrus's forehead in a vain attempt to stop his forehead from running down the rest of his face. "I didn't know-I thought because I didn't _want_ to kill you, I _couldn't_ " He gritted his teeth in frusturation, his entire body starting to shake in the heat of the moment. "Isn't that how magic _works_?"

"Well…at least you seem cool." Papyrus pointed towards Joseph's knapsack, which had fallen to the ground along with the panicking human. He gestured towards the bottle of spider cider that had fallen out. "You're…supporting local buisnesses! And…helping the…economy!"

"Damnit, _damnit!"_ Something dripped down Papyrus's face. But it wasn't liquefied bone.

Joseph quickly fell backwards, his tears clearly only making the problem worse. "There _has_ to be some way to stop this! The magic food, green spells, _anything!_ "

"You can't heal what's falling away!" Papyrus smiled sadly. "I guess I was _too_ cool to live. My body can't handle it, and it's losing its mass as a result. It's not your fault, human…well, it _is_ , but, _I_ don't blame you. It…was nice meeting you."

"Losing mass-" Joseph repeated, his eyes widening in surprise. Then, they immediately narrowed in determination.

The ghostly figure reappeared behind him, pressing a thorned hand to Papyrus's side, who had lapsed into unconsciousness as his body continued to deteriorate.

"If I gave the bones the same qualities as the can, then could I give you…"

Joseph gritted his teeth. "Only one way to find out. This is probably going to hurt." His entire body tensed up. "For _both_ of us."

The air around the two began to shimmer and glow.

* * *

As it turns out, Joseph was right. It hurt. _A lot_.

Many monsters nearby heard the yelling, but many were too intimidated or uninterested to investigate. No doubt one of those Waterfall folks went on a stroll and fell into a snowdrift (ah, the cons of being cold-blooded). Or similar excuses.

The skeleton sitting at a sentry station between the borders of the two towns was not one of them. He paused in idly skipping stones across a small puddle (while he was still sitting at the desk).

"hey, didn't that come from where papyrus said he wanted to fight the human?"

For a moment, the monster almost decided against going there-he had just gotten a new record for most skips per stone, and didn't want to break his streak. But…this fight sounded like it had escalated _way_ from a friendly bout with his brother to serious injuries.

Ignoring the Echo Flower next to him repeating what he had just said, Sans rose from his seat. The air around him distorted, and he was suddenly right outside (what was left of) his brother's station.

He could have just _walked_ there, since it was less than a quarter mile's walk, but his shortcut spell was quicker. Also, he didn't feel expending the energy'd b worth it. That was valuable calories that could be put to better effort. Like thinking up puns. And cooking hot dogs.

A burst of cold wind blew his sweatshirt's hood back, and he shrugged his bony shoulders to settle it back into place.

And then he stopped.

On the ground, lying faceup in the snow, were Papyrus and the human visitor. Joseph, wasn't it?

Were this the surface (and were he not a lazy bum), Sans would have been far more concerned than he was now. But he, as everyone else, knew monsters instantly turn to dust upon death. Meaning Papyrus was fine. But the human?

Sans bent down to look at the unconscious youth. Did he look a bit… _different_ from when they first met? His clothes hung loosely on him, and he seemed _smaller_ somehow.

Well, not like he was an expert on humans, much less anyone with flesh on their bones. He'd ask Joseph himself about it when he woke up. He _was_ still breathing, after all, and his SOUL…

Wait. Something about his SOUL seemed different. One of Sans's eyesockets went dark, and the other glowed a piercing blue, as the magic of all things around him became clear to see.

In the center of the human's chest, Sans could see his SOUL pulsing softly, the red heart symbolizing his spirit beating strong. But now, it was as if it was _bigger_. As if someone had drawn thick outlines on a 2d shape.

"huh." Sans cocked his head slightly, a sharp _crack_ sounding as the air pockets between his neck's bones popped. In the corner of his eye, he saw Papyrus's white SOUL overlaying his body.

With the same lines.

Sans's breath caught in his mouth, and he froze ramrod still.

He was absolutely silent, until he saw that the SOUL looked pretty stable, showing no signs of shaking itself apart or becoming too strong to hold in a monster's semisolid body.

Papyrus's brother breathed a sigh of relief. "wow. guess things got kinda out of control. didn't see that coming."

Still, at least both of them were in two pieces.

He looked down at Papyrus, and flinched, eyes flickering for a moment. Nothing _major_ had changed…but those _cracks_ above and below his respective eyesockets were…

…just a coincidence, and nothing to look into. At least, that's what Sans told himself. There was also a discoloration shaped like a five-pointed star on his scapula, but he could probably chalk that up to the human's own DNA getting mixed in.

The noise of loud panting caught Sans's attention. He turned around to see the Greater Dog, the leader of Snowdin's Royal Guard outpost, towering over him and the unconscious duo.

"hey, boy," Sans said. The Dog leaned down to sniff at Papyrus's sleeping form, and his brother scratched the guard behind his floppy ears. "looks like papyrus beat the human. but, uh…he wore himself out. _this_ is why I take it easy, bro. can you help me get them home?"

Greater Dog barked in affirmation, picked Papyrus up by the collar of his laboriously hand-crafted armor, and bounded off to the skeleton brothers' house.

With strength one would not expect from a chubby, short, muscle-less skeleton, Sans hoisted Joseph over his shoulder and hauled him back home.

"Nnngh," Joseph groaned, eyes still closed and barely awake.

"jojo, right?" Sans paused. "i mean, joseph joestar's a bit long. mind if i shorten it?"

"Mmmmhhhhgh," the human grumbled. "Whappen'ed? Did-"

"he's fine. thanks for that, by the way." Sans rummaged in his pocket and grabbed his house key, unlocking the front door. "if i were you, i'd sleep for a bit. sleep is always great."

"FFFne," JoJo mumbled, climbing out of Sans's grasp, and making it all of five shaky steps before falling into an immediate sleep on the nearby cough.

"and we've got a lot to talk about later," Sans finished to himself, as he moved aside to let Greater Dog get Papyrus to his room. "[stands]…never thought i'd see another one ever again. much less _two_. looks like things-"

* * *

"-just got interesting," the tiny figure at the outskirts of town said. He withdrew the vines he had extended beneath the house: while it was too risky to get close enough to _see_ what the human had done (thanks to _him_ ), he could still _hear_ perfectly well from the vibrations of sound waves.

It was already great enough that another human had fallen down into the Underground. For all of the problems that pesky Barrier the humans threw up after their war posed, it wasn't impregnable. From the outside.

But _this_ human in particular?

"Hee hee hee…guess that's the 'shining star.'" The figure mused, petals blowing slightly in the breeze. "Time to make a wish. Even with the _problem_ he caused, it's still the perfect time for the fun to begin."

Flowey the flower chuckled.

"All the pieces are in place. Now, it's time to kick it all off! Maybe by kicking that big moron's face in!"

The chuckling turned to full-blown laughter.

"I hope you put on a hell of a show…after all, I've been waiting for _you_ …JoJo!"

Flowey laughed, harder than anything without lungs should've been able to. He burrowed into the ground, vanishing deeper into the Underground.


	2. Ch 2:Strangeness in Snowdin!

_"This is a one-way door to the outside world. I'm going to destroy it so no one will ever be able to leave again."_

 _"...Oh, so you're that kind of parent. Y'know, you could just adopt. I'm sure any kids around here would love to have those pies all the time!"_

 _She flung out her arm, and Joseph's advance past her was forcefully halted by an invisible something fazing into reality and smacking him in the face. "You may joke now, but you don't know how serious this is. If you leave, they...Asgore will kill you. I have seen this time and time again."_

 _As JoJo stretched his legs and drew his hand back to push himself up, he could have sworn he saw a spectral figure, yellow wings outstretched to form a barrier against all passage. Then, it vanished. More magic, no doubt. So he probably_ did _see it._

 _"And how long ago was that? Decades? Centuries? Look, I'm sorry for your loss, but I'm not staying here. I've got places to be, and I'm not a little kid you can push around!"_

 _At that last line, Joseph drew himself up to his full height and looked Toriel over, already trying to find some weakness or way he could get out of this without having to beat up a little old lady to get back to his family. That wouldn't sit well with him, obviously._

 _Toriel stopped short of the aforementioned door, and sighed heavily. Slowly, she turned around, barely noticing that Joseph was, in fact, as tall as she was. Even though he_ may _have been older than most of the humans that ended up here, he certainly didn't_ act _like it. And he was an innocent: were she to let him go as she did all the others, nothing in the Underground would be able to save him from dying at Asgore's hand. Just like all the others._

 _"So, you truly want to leave?"_

 _"Wanting has nothing to do with it. I'm_ leaving _. And you won't stop me!"_

 _"Then prove it."_

 _Toriel's fist clenched. Then, it opened, fire blazing from her clawtips and in her palm. From a handful of flames sprung an enormous nimbus of fireballs, surrounding her in a dazzling and awesome display of light and magic. Behind her, the air began to flicker, as the winged, angelic creature reappeared._

 _"Prove to me that you are strong enough, clever enough, good enough to survive."_

Joseph's eyes slowly blinked open as the dull soreness in all his muscles wrenched him from dreamland and dragged him back to the waking world.

"So, she had the same power that Papyrus has." He stared down at his hand, and his mysterious ally's arm flickered into view next to his own. "Or, I suppose, the same power _I_ have."

He had never believed in magic before this all started. _Real_ magic, that is: growing up, he had always been amazed with street magicians and their sleight of hand. He had always loved practical jokes as a kid, and learning _ledgerdemain_ elevated him to something of a legend in the schoolyard. It also got him into a lot of trouble, but it was worth a few days of detention to show up some smarmy smarter-than-you teacher who delighted in the misery of tormenting his classmates.

But around the time that he met a talking flower that tried to kill him and a walking goat lady who could throw fire that didn't actually burn things, he immediately began to reconsider. He never expected to develop that kind of power himself.

Yet JoJo knew such monologuing would have to come later. Namely, as his mind cleared from the grogginess all people (human or monster) have upon first awakening, he remembered his immediate goal in between his memories and musings: getting home.

He _did_ remember something vaguely after his fight with Papyrus and the _pain_ that had been afterwards: apparently he was safe and sound, which was good to know.

But that, and all other big ideas, vanished the moment he slid to the edge of the couch and looked into the semi-reflective screen of the old CRT-TV on the other side of the living room.

He looked at the lanky, svelte, and distinctively _not_ muscular young man the surface reflected.

Joseph Joestar's eye twitched.

And a floor above him, Sans was rudely awoken from a sound sleep of twelve-plus hours by a wall-shaking yell of "OH MY GOOOOOOD!"

* * *

 **Monster Oddyssey**

 **Chapter 2:**

 **In Which JoJo and Sans go to White Castle, Papyrus Becomes an Astronaut, and the Sound Barrier is broken to itty bitty pieces.**

* * *

"oh, hey. Thanks for waking me up, jojo."

Joseph was cut short from a frustrated and aggravated rant by the sudden realization that Sans was sitting right next to him. He had _not_ been there the moment prior, but now he was, like a rainstorm in the spring.

"Where the hell did _you_ come from?" he asked, deciding to compartmentalize his laundry list of complaints for later. Muscles grew back, over time. And honestly, it's not like he used them much. He preferred making enemies beat _themselves_ over a straight slugfest. It was more the principle of it, honestly. Oh, and the _pain_.

"my room. or my house. or the underground. how specific should i be?"

JoJo rolled his eyes. "You _know_ what I meant. You just showed up in the blink of an eye. I didn't see or hear any doors open, and this couch is a great viewpoint for the rest of the house, so I _would_ have. More magic? Like that spirit I figured out how to conjure before?"

"stands ain't magic. they're…" Sans tapped at his bony chin throughtfully, trying to think of how to explain this complex topic in layman's terms. "different. they can't do as much, but they are _really_ good at what they do. Like mustard."

"…what?"

Seemingly ignoring his confusion, Sans looked upwards, towards the house's other bedroom. "tell you what. i'm hungry, and i wanna make sure by brother doesn't blow up from his own stand. I'll check on him, and then I'll answer your questions over lunch at grillbys. my treat."

Well, he wasn't going to get answer so quickly out of someone who was somehow lazier than _he_ was. "Alright, alright. I was going to finish up the comic I had with me anyways-it was one of the only things I had on me when I fell down here." He reached down to his bag, lying at the side of the couch.

"Do you read comics? I know you guys don't get much of that down here…or much of anything, because of the [Barrier] I keep hearing so much about…but I'd like to think that superheroes are one of those things that cross all cultural boundaries. There's something about the lead triumphing over a stronger foe by using their wits and

JoJo trailed off as he immediately realized his mistake in taking his eyes off of Sans, "…you're already gone, aren't you?"

The monster did not respond. Likely because he was no longer there. Out of the corner of his eye, Joseph could see the door to Papyrus's room swing shut with nary a squeak to be heard from the well-oiled hinges.

* * *

Bones creaked as he stirred from a fitful sleep into a painful waking world. Not out of any pathos or depression, because he felt much better after his rest. No, his bones were just sore. They creaked in distress, and they felt…swollen? Did the human get snow stuck in his battle body in their fight?

"oh, hey bro. good to see you're up."

Papyrus's eyesockets flared to life as he heard the telltale voice of his lazy brother enter the room. Presumably, the rest of his body followed it in.

"…Sans?" Papyrus croaked out, slowly and painfully rising from his prized bed-car. "What…How long was I out?!" He demanded, suddenly snapping back into his usual energetic state. "Do you have _any_ idea what I could've gotten done in whatever time I've been napping?!"

"not much. I mean, the human wiped the floor with you. and i think whatever he did to you at the end left you outta commission for a while." He was suddenly at the other end of the room, having apparently been too lazy to _walk_ over and sit in Papyrus's desk chair.

"Wait…the human is gone?" Papyrus interrupted.

"uh-"

"No. No I'm not."

Papyrus nearly jumped out of bed when the human walked into his room. He looked-

"Gah! Human, what happened to your bulk?"

"Oh, is _that_ all you noticed?" a much lankier and skinner human muttered, drawing his belt tighter in an effort to keep his pants up. "I thought you'd see more than that! I cut my hair, I shaved, I even remembered to floss…but no, you go _straight_ to the body! How shallow!"

His expression softened a little. "Alright, what _I think_ happened is that I used my invisible friend back there to give you some of my muscle mass to stop you from dying. Like a bone marrow transfusion…except all at once. With no painkillers. _You're welcome._ "

"I…don't really remember what happened. So…we came to a draw? Ha! Impressive you were able to equal the great Papyrus!"

"Hey, what are friends for if they don't challenge each other?" he said, smirking.

"…friend?" Papyrus asked, quietly. "…You're my friend?"

"Better us friends then having to kill each other, so sure. Friends."

"WOWIE!" Papyrus leaned forwards in exuberance, ignoring the bed's dangerously loud creaks of distress. "Who knew all I had to do to make friends was-"

A storm of sudden movement and the sharp snapping of hardwood forcefully cut Papyrus off, as his bed collapsed under his weight. Right alongside the floor.

The three of them didn't move at first. JoJo and Sans looked down at Papyrus. Papyrus looked up at the others from his position atop the pile of rubble that had formerly been his bed and part of the ceiling.

"Saaaaaaaans!" he finally screamed, rising from the rubble. "I _TOLD_ you to use better construction materials when we built the house all those years ago! You skimped on costs again, didn't you?!"

"uh, actually I did use the right wood." Sans scratched the back of his skull, barely holding back a chuckle or four. "looks like _you_ got heavier, bro. guess jojo was right about the 'mass transfusion' thing."

"Argh! Do you know how _difficult_ it was to build this thing?!" Papyrus continued to gripe, as he rose higher to his full height. "To find the right kind of rubber for the tires, which are now punctured? To find the right size of metal scrap to make the axles? To-"

"To realize you're floating?" JoJo interrupted.

Papyrus abruptly stopped, and looked down. He was _still_ rising. As in, rising into the air. "Oh. So I am, huma-er, JoJo. I don't recall learning levitation spells."

"you didn't" Sans replied, looking behind him as Papyrus experimentally tried to flap his arms to fly higher. And only succeeding in making himself look silly as he still gently and gradually ascended higher. "guess we know what your stand does now."

"Alright, you got me," Joseph admitted as he stared at the titan who had manifested itself behind Papyrus. "I'd understand my [Stand] well enough if it were just your usual magic you monsters use. But if that…zombie in armor and a top hat and _basketballs_ …is somehow the same thing as _mine_ , I have to know the answer to that." He laughed. "I think I'll have that lunch now."

"okay." Sans walked forward. He then fell through the new hole in the floor, brushing off the rather large fall with no reaction and heading to the door. "what temperature do you want your burgers? the cook's made of fire, so i hope you like well-done."

"Grillbys _again_?" Papyrus said, sighing. "I don't _care_ if they've started using magic instead of reused human oil to fry everything, it's _still_ not good for you!"

"Hey, I feel like I havem't eaten anything in _days_ ," Joseph countered. Exprimentally, he climbed onto the stairwell's railings and slid down, pleased to know his unintentional makeover hadn't affected his balance. "If it's edible and tastes like food, I'm game."

"…wait a moment. Sans, how do I get my Stand to stop?" Papyrus asked, still floating higher.

"I guarantee, kid. You'll like it, or your money back."

"Sans, how do I _get down?!_ "

"If you're _paying_ , what good is _that_ guarantee?"

" _HOW DO I GET DOWN?!"_

"touché, jojo." Sans paused as JoJo walked out the door and he prepared to follow. "bro, _you're_ the one who always insists on doing the crosswords and other puzzles in the paper on your own. you can figure this out yourself. if not…we'll be back in a half hour or so."

Papyrus silently fumed as Sans closed their front door.

"…if only I could remember how those humans moved in space in that one movie," he muttered to himself, still flailing helplessly in midair.

* * *

The bar erupted into a chorus of "hellos," "hi!," and other forms of greeting as Sans and JoJo entered the pub in the middle of town.

Sans greeted them all in turn, then continued onward.

"Lot of dogs here," JoJo noted as the two strode to the bar and took some stools near the register. "They just like you 'cause they want to chew your bones up?"

"not quite, buddy. i just give them the food scraps i don't eat."

The walking shape of fire and flames emerged from the kitchen, noting Sans was there with a few embers and crackles of greeting. He took the pair's orders and returned to the kitchen.

"I think you promised to explain how those [Stands] are different from the magic I've seen all other monsters use?" JoJo asked.

"yep, i sure did. this'll need props. pass me the mustard and ketchup?"

Though he had no idea where the skeleton was going with this, JoJo retrieved the condiments from an empty table via Synchronicity and handed them to Sans. He tried to ignore how most of the attendants of the poker game the next table over were now barking at his Stand. The Lesser Dog (according to his nameplate) even tried to sniff the apparition, only to whine in disappointment when it faded away.

"think of it like this." Sans moved the twin bottles of ketchup and mustard and placed them in front of him. "ketchup is magic. it makes anything you put it on taste better, and you can put it on anything you want because every place has it. but it can't make much taste _great_ : only really good."

He pointed to the mustard next. "now, stands are mustard. they're rarer than ketchup and not everyone has them. and if it's spicy mustard, not everyone can handle it, and won't be able to keep the food down. but it can make things _great,_ and can do things most pro magicians'd need centuries of practice to pull."

"…You know, that actually makes sense," Joseph remarked as the bartender returned with their food. "But there's more to it, isn't it? When my Stand was tearing through those bones out there, I _felt_ those punches on my hands. That's not like all those magic bullets I was pelted with since I landed here, right?"

"yep. stands aren't just a projection of you: they _are_ you. it's your SOUL given form. so, if something happens to your stand, it happens to _you_." Sans proceeded to dump the entire container of ketchup on his fries and chowed down on the vegetable mess. "that's the most important thing to remember: if your stand gets hurt, so do you."

"Heh…I figured it was too good a deal to come without some drawbacks." The human said. "Always two sides to a coin. Unless you count the edge: people always seem to forget about that in coin flips."

"also, a stand's range is connected to its power. so, if your stand can only do stuff really close to you, it'll be super strong to compensate. and vice-versa with the other way around." Sans slowly swrilled his class of ketchup (how much could a single person _have_ in one sitting, anyways?). "that's pretty much it. though…there's something else I wanted to ask you."

Shrugging, JoJo dug into his burger, shivering slightly as a customer's exit left the door open for the freezing cold to enter. "Shoot."

"have you ever heard…of a [talking flower?]"

* * *

Outside the bar, Doggo whined softly as he closed the door and stumbled outside, the door vanishing behind him as it went still. Bad enough that he was losing the poker game and sending most of his weekly paycheck down the drain, but the cravings had to kick in _now_ , too?

He really had picked the wrong week to give up smoking dog treats.

Grumbling, the canine-esque monster snapped his paw to produce a spark (red magic had never been his best spells-he always ended up setting himself on fire if he did more than a candle's worth of flame. A shame, since it helped to see his way around late at night, when everyone slept still).

As he made his way to the back of the building, he brought up the dog treat to the sparks, setting it ablaze.

He took a deep drag from the foodstuff, and coughed as the pseudo-narcotic kicked in. But as he took a second puff, something _moved_ far behind him.

"WHOZZERE?!"

He barked, turning in circles several times. But the blur of motion had faded, leaving behind only the cold, clear night around him. Slowly, his ears lowered, and he relit his treat.

But the moment he tried to take another drag, another burst of movement blazed through town, this time closer to him.

"MOVED AGAIN!" he yelped. But then, nothing.

"I said I'd quit tomorrow!" Doggo whined, self-conciously hiding the rest of the pack of treats behind his back. "Knock it off!"

For the next few moments, he didn't see anything else. He turned back around again, relighting and partaking in another puff of smoked dog treat.

But no matter how much of the smoke he inhaled, he couldn't help but stop shivering.

Whoever was moving had left…right? But why could he still hear laughter? Surely there was no one there?

He growled in frustration, Must have been an echo or something.

Long echo, though. It just kept getting louder. Was that how it worked? He would have to ask Greater Dog later-he was pretty smart.

Doggo grunted as the treat blew out again, as the wind picked up out of nowhere. A burst of sound-the booming noise of wind picking up out of nowhere, he guessed-had blown it out.

He held the treat and his paw out in front of him, and lit it.

And that, with a burst of orange, was the last thing Doggo ever saw. Forever.

* * *

"A [talking flower]?" JoJo shoved the last of the burger into his mouth and started washing it down with the can of soda Grillby had just placed on the countertop. "I met a talking turnip or something in the Ruins—where I was heading from when I saw you at the gate. But something tells me that's not the kinda flower you mean."

Sans noticed that JoJo's empty hand was clenched into a fist, and his brow was furrowed in some deep emotion. Frustration, maybe?

Sans looked around. Left, then right. Then, one of the dots of light in his eyesockets faded to nothingness—the other eye glowing a piercing blue, he looked at the floor. "okay, we're clear. if he'd been here, i would have had to talk about echo flowers instead, so he wouldn't know he's onto us. Seeing how your mood just backflipped, you know who i mean, don't you?"

"The first thing I met when I fell down here was a talking flower. Called himself [Flowey]. You know him too, don't you?"

"so we're cutting right to the chase, huh?" Sans waved Grillbys over and ordered a glass of the hard stuff. He'd _need_ a pick me up if he were going to talk about that _thing_ for long. "yeah, i've seen it, a few times. Lurking around the house, around where I used to work at New Home, and even in waterfall—the next town over—now and again.

"for now, I'll skip over how he's a total jerk with no respect for anyone else and probably murdered someone recently. He's _dangerous,_ buddy. He's got enough magic to blow a hole in a human being with one flick of a petal. And that would be bad enough. But it may have a [stand] as well. A really strong one."

"…Yeah, that's definitely him," Joseph agreed. "So, what're you trying to say? That he's a gigantic prick? That he's going to try and kill me? I knew that already. Believe me. I _know_. He tried, and he came closer than anyone else yet."

"i'm saying to be careful, kid." Sans got up from his seat and tossed a bag of gold onto the counter. "look, i like ya. you laugh at my jokes, and you saved my brother's life. so i won't beat around the bush: be careful. listen around you—i can feel a storm coming. watch out for the thunder, and be ready for that _thing_ to pull something. keep that stand of yours strong."

" _Wait_ a sec, that reminds me of something else I wanted to know," Joseph said, whirling around in his seat, this time managing to catch Sans before he mysteriously disappeared again. "How do you know so much about Stands, if they're as rare as you said down here? Do you have one of your own?"

"oh." Sans paused mid-step out the door, and turned around. "well, to tell you the truth, i—"

He was interrupted by a yelp of agony outside, and then a cracking sound, as if someone had smashed a window to a thousand pieces.

The entire bar fell silent. The bird sitting in the rafters ceased its song, the dogs playing poker in the corner instantly stopped their yipping and boastful bluffing, and even the drunken rabbit trying to flirt with the inanimate plant sitting in the corner of the room froze.

"Eh…someone break something?" Joseph said, shattering the silence. "It's a bar. Things break all the time in these. Speaking from experience."

Lesser Dog was the first to move from their place, bounding outside to check on what had disturbed this peaceful and normal enough night. And mere moments later, the group heard him howl in anguish.

* * *

Joseph was the last one out the door, deciding to follow only after everyone else had left the bar to avoid being trampled by the pack of dogs swarming out of the tavern.

He peeked above the shoulders of the Dogi couple. At first, all he could see was a pile of dust on the ground.

"That's it?" he asked. "It sucks if the vacuum or dustpan broke, but you could just get—"

And then he noticed the pile of empty clothes the dust had enveloped, and the still-smoking dog biscuit that had fallen to the floor.

Immediately the civilian bar patrons broke into a frenzy, screaming in terror and panic. Luckily, the fact that enforcers of the law were already present stopped a drunken and fearful riot from breaking out.

Quickly, around a dozen constructs of magical dogs sprung into reality in a circle around Doggo's remains, creating a makeshift police cordon. The Dogi began barking orders to secure the area and find the culprit-meanwhile, their boss began to bark to the people, advising the growing crowd to either return to their homes or stay in groups to avoid what looked and smelled like something dangerous.

"huh. One shot?"

JoJo glanced sideways, noticing Sans near the back of the crowd.

"hey, question. You seemed to have done your homework on monsters, right?"

"Yeah, there…there was a couple of books about monster biology and stuff in the library, when I stopped for lunch yesterday before Papyrus." Ripping his eyes away from the disturbingly corpse-less crime scene in front of him (which was somehow _freakier_ than if an actual dead body were there), he turned around to look at the skeleton. "But it was like thirty pages long, so I used the Wi-Fi to see a video on it instead. Crappy production values, but it was good enough."

"okay, so you know that monsters use magic to talk and express emotions and all that jazz?" Sans tilted his head, then jerked his thumb at the crime scene. "and you know we use it to fight, too. you know monsters are way more resilient to magic than you. so if a monster tried to kill another monster, it'd take way longer than one hit."

"You're suggesting that a human killed him, then." Joseph blinked in confusion. "But I thought I was the only one down here?" he asked, lowering his voice to make sure none of the employees of the state would realize Public Enemy Number One was right in front of them. "That's why you guys wanted to capture me, right?"

"your SOUL, and the other six human SOULs, are what we need to break down the [barrier]." Sans's eyes faded, then reappeared, in an approximation of a long blink. "and the other SOULs should still be in new home under lock and key."

" _Should_ be." Joseph groaned, then massaged his temples, trying to pre-emptively take care of an oncoming headache. "So, on top of half the monsters trying to kill me, now we've got a serial killer stirring up _more_ panic? That might be an escaped ghost or six?"

"sounds like it. But, hey. We beat them once, right? It's how they ended up locked up in the first place. So someone'll just beat them again. Nothing to worry about."

"I…guess so." Knowing how many near-death experiences he'd had in the last few days alone, JoJo could attest to monsters being able to defend themselves against humans. At least, when they weren't victim to a sneak attack like that poor puppy or something. "Well, much as I hate to go, I _do_ have to get going. Granny Lucy must be worried sick about me. Why don't we head back to your place, I'll grab my stuff, and I'll be on my way?"

"works for me. 'sides, if our culprit shows up again, papyrus can handle him. He could handle _you_ after all."

" _Really_? _I_ won that fight, you know!" JoJo complained as the two set off. "I just collapsed after _saving his life!_ Sure, he was tough and all, but I won!"

As the two talked and walked away, neither noticed the entity on the rooftops with the pulsing orange aura surrounding its body. Not that they would have: it was gone for but a moment, before it vanished into thin air.

* * *

"So…you must be the 'strong and silent' type I've heard so much about!"

Papyrus's Stand said nothing. The zombie-like construct merely floated in place, standing parallel to its master as he turned upside down from his ill-thought out attempts to get down sent him upside-down.

"Don't worry! I, the Great Papyrus, can do enough talking for the both of us!" Papyrus stopped talking for a moment, scratching his chin. "Actually, you _are_ me, aren't you? At least, that's what Sans implied. How like him to be too lazy to come up with a proper explanation on such an important topic!

"You'll need a name…How about 'Spaghetti Knight?'"

The Stand showed no response.

"…You're right, your powers have nothing to do with spaghetti. Sadly." Papyrus shrugged. "Alright, then why don't I call you [Thriller], because I'm _thrilled_ to have this new power so few possess? At least, until I think of a better name than that placeholder."

The newly-christened Thriller nodded slightly, but did nothing else.

"Excellent! Now, onto the next order of business!" Experimentally, Papyrus conjured a bone and tossed it at the ceiling. His grin grew as he noticed that the momentum of the throw _finally_ forced his body into a velocity moving vaguely downwards. "I see! So my… _our_ control of gravity has become even greater now! Now I can will the fundamental force of nature to bend at my comma—"

At the thought of freely controlling this power, Papyrus subconsciously deactivated his Stand's power. Unfortunately, he realized this a split-second _after_ he had already cancelled the force holding him aloft. Which led to _another_ painful drop onto the ruins of his bed.

"Ouch!" Grumbling to himself, Papyrus watched as Thriller faded into thin air, its purpose served for now. "Well, the first step was a doozy, but I'm getting the hang of it now! Wait…I have an _excellent_ idea!

"With this new power I've earned, Undyne will _surely_ let me into the Royal Guard now!" Strolling confidently to the door, Papyrus flung it open. "Everyone, I'm off to chase my dreams!"

Papyrus was answered by his brother flying past the door, and the entire town, at speeds faster than he had ever seen in his life. Followed by a blast of ear-breaking sound blowing him off of his feet and shattering every window and pane of glass on the block.

* * *

About a minute earlier, JoJo and Sans were walking back to the brothers' house, the former carefully ducking out of the sight of the guards now patrolling town to avoid yet another confrontation. He may love dogs, but he wasn't fond of being bitten by them all over his body. Even with less of him to bite now.

"have you named it yet?"

"Named what? My Stand?"

"yep. i mean, did you just plan on saying 'hey, stand!' whenever you want it to help out?"

"Guess you have a point." The human thought for a moment. "Are they usually named _after_ something? Gods, heroes, baseball teams, anything?"

"it's your stand. you name it."

JoJo rolled his eyes. "Yeah, _real_ helpful." He willed his Stand's vines to manifest around his arm. Then, he bent down briefly, grabbing a handful of snow in one hand, and bringing the other to his collar to touch the hem of his scarf.

Joseph thought for a moment, and experimentally willed his Stand to make a connection between the two, as he did with Papyrus and himself, or the soda can and wall before that. Maybe he could make the snow warmer?

His plan didn't seem to have the intended effect, as the scarf around his neck immediately grew freezing cold, taking on the same temperature of the cold wasteland of the town around them. Yelping in surprise, he quickly forced his Stand to undo the effect, and accordingly, his garment heated up again.

"It can force things to take on the same qualities as other stuff…" he mused aloud. "Alright…how about [Synchronicity]?"

"well, it's a _name_ ," Sans confirmed. "'course, quality is subjective, so that's not up for me to say if it's any good. heard better stand names. also heard worse."

"That reminds me." Joseph turned around to face his companion, only a few feet away from the house he had stayed the night prior. "You never _did_ answer how you knew so much about Stands if they're so rare down here. Wanna clarify?"

Sans's jaw bone clacked open, as he took a deep breath to start what was no doubt a long, long story.

Which was cut short into a single syllable as he was sent flying by a sudden impact, hurtling into the distant forest bordering the town.

"Holy _shit!_ "

Joseph involuntarily rolled backwards as the resulting sonic boom forced him off his feet. Coughing, he brushed the snow off of his body as best he could and instantly started scanning the horizon. "Quit trying to get out of this!"

"Who's getting out?"

Joseph froze. That was _not_ a voice he recognized.

"Not _you_. That's for sure."

He felt a sudden impact to his back, sending him stumbling a few inches and knocking him into the snow again.

"Alright, enough of the snowball fight!" As he jumped to his feet, Joseph called up Synchronicity's vines and flung out his arm, wrapping his tendrils around the drain pipe near Papyrus's roof. He hurled himself a floor higher, just barely dodging another strike out of nowhere from his vanishing assailant. "Who the hell are _you?!_ "

The mysterious foe merely laughed.

Out of nowhere, a figure appeared on the ground below him. He was a pale _human_ , faintly tinged by an orange aura. He raised his fists into a boxing stance, face curled into a mocking smirk and smarmy glare. The bandanna around his spectral head fluttered briefly in the wind.

"Is my name really important to you? All you need to know, Joseph Joestar, is that I'm gonna be the one who _kills_ you. Here. And. Now."

* * *

Author's Note: Because I forgot to do so in the last chapter, here's the requisite Stand stats, plus this chapters' sheet.

Synchronicity  
User: Joseph Joestar  
Stats:  
Power: C (Formerly B)  
Speed: B  
Precision: B  
Durability: C (Formerly A)  
Range: C  
Learning: A

Abilities:  
Synchronizing: By touching an object or entity with its thorns or hitting it with launched thorns, Synchronicity can force it to take on similar qualities and traits of another object it has also touched. This ranges from mass, density, weight, hardness, conductivity, heat, to many other things the user can imagine. However, this ability can't be used to directly harm people due to lack of precision-Joseph cannot cause someone's heart to stop beating by synching it to an inanimate object, for example-the heart would merely take on the consistency of it while still functioning. Synchronicity must also actually make contact with its thorns in order for the ability to function.

Vines: In addition to its main power, Joseph can also use Synchronicity's vines as whips or grappling hooks, allowing him to grab and swing from objects and buildings much like the [Hermit Purple] another version of him possessed.

Thriller  
User: Papyrus  
Stats:  
Power: B  
Speed: C  
Precision: A  
Durability: D  
Range: C  
Learning: C

Ability: Gravity Cancellation  
If an entity or object falls within the Stand's range, Papyrus can use Thriller to cause the target to become unnaffected by gravity. This causes all the effects one would expect, namely weightlessness. If an entity is affected, it can only move itself through space via creating a force outside its body-throwing an object, concussive waves of magic, gunshots, ect. Otherwise, they drift helplessly through the air, flailing all the way for humorous effect.


	3. Ch 3: Orange Razorface-Ghost Assassin!

Many miles away, in the capital city of New Home…

Flowey stifled his giggles as he burrowed through the steel doors and into the coffins. He was a bit disappointed the guards didn't seem to be here this time, meaning there was no one to kill, but given how things were picking up, maybe some spare time was actually good for him this one time.

"Oooooh, what do we have here?" Dozens of purple tendrils extended from his roots, tearing off the lids of six of the coffins (the seventh of which he already knew was empty, saving room for an occupant yet to enter its cold embrace). He lifted them off, and extended his face into a sadistic grin when he saw his targets were still there.

"Old geezer's as naïve as ever, isn't he? Didn't even post guards for _these beauties_." His vines tore through wood, plastic, and glass, eventually wrapping themselves around the very SOULs contained within. The abomination expanded his consciousness with a pulse of magic, and waited.

After a few minutes of doing Lord-Knows-What, Flowey relaxed his concentration on the spell. "Hee hee hee…Just as planned! All the little rats are on board this ship! Or _snails_ , yes, that's the more accurate term here! Now all there's left to do—"

With a flick of a vine, the containers holding the SOULs were smashed into so many pieces of ruined glass and metal.

"-break 'em…out?"

Too late, Flowey had noticed that lengths of metallic chains, about as wide as a human's hair, had been attached from the rim of the containers to the edges of the coffins' roofs.

Had been, in the past tense, since they were now broken alongside the SOULs prisons.

Flowey heard a loud _thud_ from directly behind him as the SOULs flew off.

"Well, well, well. Here a bit _late_ , aren't we?" Smirking, he began to turn himself around. "They're escaping, old man. And there's nothing you can—"

Before he could finish that sentence, he was cut off when a blue-dyed leather shoe slammed down upon him at breakneck speeds.

"KU!" The figure's masklike face betrayed no emotion whatsoever, even as it slammed its foot down again and again. And again, and again, and again, each strike accompanied by a mighty "KUKUKUKUKUKUKU!"

It only stopped when there was nothing left beneath it's expensive and well-tailored fot besides mulch and ruined petals.

"He was right," the lumbering giant muttered to itself. "We _should_ have used stronger security. Though we've got what we need thanks to my power…this is _still_ bad."

The figure began to fade into thin air, paws brushing against its poumpadour as it rubbed its temples in distress. "Best go back to him and tell him our alarm was tripped, and _they're_ out. I only hope we track them down…or better yet, grab the last one…before it all goes to heck."

Back up the staircase, a very not-dead Flowey emerged in a burst of yellow light, hissing and groaning in pain.

"Ghhh…if it weren't for _JoJo_ hogging all of the determination, it would've all gone _perfectly!_

"Then again," the flower added, psychotic smirk returning after a few moments using its face to express acute pain and irritation instead, "It's the goal that matters, not the details. Isn't it?"

Had there not been literal tons of soil and rock in the way, the ground under the Underground would've echoed with evil and chilling laughter. But, since it was clogged with the earth, the ground remained muffled, and all but silent.

* * *

 **Monster Oddyssey**

 **Chapter 3:**

 **In which Flowey Seduces the Undead, JoJo Plays Colleg Ball, and Asgore makes a Public Service Announcement on Heavy Weather.**

* * *

"All you need to know, Joseph Joestar, is that I'm gonna be the one who _kills_ you. Here. And. Now."

Joseph stared at his opponent. The staredown lasted for but a moment, but it felt as if it dragged on longer for him.

"Uh..no."

"…what?"

"I'm still alive." Joseph smirked, leaning down to tie his shoe. "So, clearly you _didn't_ kill me 'then and now.' For some kind of ghost murderer, you're…kind of _shit_ at it."

The spirit's eye twitched several times, an ethereal vein popping out of its forehead.

Before JoJo could even move, he heard a piercing roar, as if a jet engine had suddenly appeared next to him and screamed in his ear right before takeoff. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the figure had seemingly teleported right behind him.

"Hey, would it _kill_ you to wait a sec before trying to kill me?" he asked nonchalauntly. "I've gotta tie my show now—"

But he was too slow to act before a strong blow struck him in the small of his back, sending him hurtling off the roof towards the hard brick walls of the next building over.

Smirking, the ghost leaned off of the edge, leering at Joseph as he approached his imminent doom. "Too slow for you? That should be plenty fast enough for you to _die_."

But rather than smashing against the bricks and turning into a gooey paste of flesh and bones, the living human _bounced_ off of the brick wall, sliding into a split-legged stop as his trajectory abruptly shifted to bring him back to the ground.

"And _Joestar sticks the landing!_ " he cried triumphantly. "That's a home run for the Yankees! What?" he added as the ghost glared at him. "You thought you could take me down so easily? While I was moving to tie my shoe, I synchronized the consistency of my body to its rubber soles. I suspected that you killed that monster back there by blunt force, so I just made myself resilient enough to take a hit."

"Synchronizing." The ghost barked a laugh, as another figure faded into existence behind him. "Synchronzing? What kind of crappy power is _that?!_ " You really _think_ the power to make watches _run on time_ can beat my [Razorface]?"

"So _that's_ your Stand's name?" Joseph asked. "Not bad, not bad. Let me guess, its powers are—"

"Heh, as if I'd _tell_ you what it can do," his enemy sneered. "Don't you know you can easily counter a Stand if you know what it can—"

"Super speed."

The figure froze.

"That's it, isn't it?" Joseph said. He pointed at the tracks left in the snow. The tracks of _water_ , that is. "You can move so quickly the friction you generate melts snow in a split-second. You also caused those scorch marks on Papyrus's house," he said, his hand moving to point out the aforementioned damage to the building. "And you must've also caused that sonic boom that broke all the windows from your sudden start. Am I right…"

Sputtering for a moment, the ghost opened his mouth to reply.

"…Matthew?"

The ghost gasped and recoiled in shock, as if he'd been struck. "How did you—"

"Matthew Daves, isn't it?" Triumphantly, JoJo zipped open his knapsack and pulled out a raggedy bandanna, the exact same color and shape as the one the ghost wore. "Found this in one of those magic boxes earlier. Honestly, you're, what, fifteen,from your appearance? You _still_ put your name on all your clothes?"

Bearing his teeth, the now-named Matthew snarled in anger. "You _went through my stuff?!_ "

"Your fault for leaving it in a public space," Joseph retorted, shrugging.

"I have to agree with the other human, JoJo! That was _very_ rude of you!"

Both humans stopped their volleys of insult to look down at the house's front door. At it, Papyrus stood, gazing up at the roof where Matthew stood.

"Hello," he said, waving. "I am the Great Papyrus! And if you wanted some spaghetti from the house, you could have just asked. It's right there in the—"

The skeleton was cut short when the dead human zoomed down the walls of the house and struck him right in the neck, with more than enough force to send his head flying clean off.

"Papyrus!" Joseph cried, his composure dropping for a moment.

"Another _freak_ down the drain," Matthew taunted, spitting on Papyrus's welcome mat for good measure. "Well, time to finish taking out the trash."

"Oh, do feel free to do so!"

Matthew fell dead silent, and abruptly turned around to see a very _not_ dead Papyrus standing just a few feet away.

"You can visit it at any time!" The monster tilted its head, rubbing at the sore spot on his neck. "Of course, it may be hard to do so when you're so busy fighting me."

"How…but…you should be _dead!_ Agin! That hit should've killed you just like all the others!"

"Really?" Papyrus shrugged. "Oh. I suppose the gift my new friend over there gave me has helped me to triumph yet again! What a thoughtful present!"

Joseph pretended to shy away bashfully, mockingly putting a hand to his cheek and fluttering his eyelashes. "Oh, how flattering!"

"So, you've got a trick up your sleeve." Razorface appeared again, the steel sawblades covering every vein of its body revving to action. "Well, I've got a _Stand_ , bitch! And this beauty can't be seen by _non-Stand users!_ Good luck beating me now!"

Drawing back its arm, Razorface sprang forward almost faster than the eye could follow, ready to bring its arm down and slice this monster in half.

Or, at least, that was Matthew's plan, before something _else_ stopped the strike with a mighty "NYEH!"

"Uh, you seem to be mistaken on how those work," Papyrus corrected, as Thriller wrenched Razorface's arm down and punched him in the nose. "I didn't have any problem seeing JoJo's Stand before I got my own! And, for that matter, neither are they!"

The humans turned to see the townsfolk, cheering the new town hero on against this dangerous murderer. Some of them had their smartphones out, taking pictures of both manifested Stands despite Matthew's claims to invisibility.

"Fear not, citizens!" Papyrus cheered, bowing to the crowd a few times. "I will save you, and deliver this lawbreaker to Undyne for—"

Papyrus was cut off, as his hands went to his throat again. "For…hold on…lightheaded…"

"So _what_ if I'm wrong or something?" the SOUL gloated, as Razorface's hands closed around Thriller's throat. "I can still _kill_ all of you as easily as I can breathe! All I need to do is get a good run going and I can break through anything you shitheads can throw at me! And I think I'll do it with a bit of _flight_ this time!"

Matthew crouched down low to the ground, and jumped.

He got all of two feet before gravity sent him crashing back down again.

"Sorry to disappoint, but I still have my _magic!_ " Papyrus said, taking a few deep breaths to regain his footing.

"What? Did you think that just because I, the Great Papyrus, discovered a powerful new ability, somehow lost all of my old ones?" Papyrus knelt to the ground, smiling broadly at the very pissed off ghost. "I spent years working on my magic! I won't just let it go to _waste_ now!"

"Hey, quick question," JoJo butted in, making Papyrus tear his attention away from the other human. "Aren't these things supposed to be locked up right now?"

"You mean the human SOULs? Like this one?" Papyrus asked.

He pointed down to the entity beneath him.

Or, rather, the entity that had _been_ beneath him. Past tense.

"Oh. Oops!" Papyrus exclaimed, reflexively summoning a gigantic wall of bones in front of the townsfolk to protect them.

"The town hero, everyone!" said Joseph, irony positively dripping from his tone of voice.

Another roar followed JoJo's words.

"Drat! He got away!" Papyrus cursed. "At least I erected a barrier in time to make it safe for everyone to watch the fight!"

"You really think he'll just stay put to fight us?" Sighing, Joseph pointed at the tracks in the snow, the footprints blending together into a solid line of slush leading _away_ from the fully-protected town now. "He's probably making a run-up now to build momentum. Which means…"

Joseph manifested Synchronicity in his arm and wrapped his vines around the chimney of the barn, grabbing Papyrus by the wrist.

He was just barely quick enough to yank both of them into the air before a blur of orange and chrome blazed past where they had once been, obliterating the snow underfoot.

"…We'll have to trap him somewhere to limit his speed," he finished, as the two landed on the rooftop. "Much as I'd like to get outta town, if he could find me before, and he's so dead-set on killing me…There may not be too many places to hide. He can cover the entire town in the time it takes to breathe, there isn't any getting out of this. Will those bone fences be able to stop him if he's going so fast?"

A screech of pain was all the answer they needed.

"No matter how fast you go, you can't move through light blue magic!" Papyrus announced triumphantly. "

Still smoking, Matthew coughed, glaring at the circle of bones protecting the townspeople. "Tch…So you stopped my momentum. And I can't just off those furry bastards over there."

"Not all of us have fur!" "(You racist!)"

"Quiet in the peanut gallery!" the SOUL yelled at the Dogi and their fellow guards. "You'll all get your turn to _die_ once I finish my job here!"

"Job?" JoJo asked.

"Nothing _you_ need to worry about," Matthew said.

From _behind_ JoJo.

The living human's eyes widened in shock, and his hand reached out to the chimney and its strong, sturdy bricks.

But he was too late. Razorface spun the blades lining the veins on the back of its hand and smacked Joseph off of the roof.

Grunting in pain, Joseph hit the ground hard, slamming painfully into the melted slush and exposed soil below the tavern.

"Guess your _synchronizing_ isn't as long-lasting as you'd liked?" Matthew taunted, moving from the bar's roof to standing over Joseph in the blink of an eye. "So much for being a _threat_ , pipsqueak."

"Heh."

Matthew's sneer vanished. _"What?_ "

Spitting blood out of his mouth, Joseph climbed to his feet, despite the snow stinging the wounds Matthew had inflicted on his forehead.

"You _really do_ think you're some kind of bigshot, do you?" Joseph said, grinning. "I'm _so impressed_ how you killed a monster who didn't even see you coming."

The ghost's eye twitched.

"What's your _next_ big trick after you kill me?" his opponent said mockingly, rising back into a fighting stance. "Are you going to kill some little old lady as she walks down the street? Maybe steal some candy from a baby?"

"Don't you _dare_ mock me!" Matthew screamed, his vision clouding with crimson as rage made him start vibrating in place. "Do you have _any idea_ what these _freaks of nature_ did to me?! I have _every right to kill-_!"

Whatever he was about to say next was cut off by a piercing "ARO!" and a fist to the face.

"There's _my_ first trick," Joseph said. "Here _are the rest!_ "

"ARORORORORORORORORA!"

A fraction of a second after emerging from Joseph's body, Synchronicity's fists erupted into a flurry of punches, each one of them striking true and slamming into Matthew with bone-shattering force.

He howled in pain as he was sent flying from the blows, passing through the row of buildings in his way and past the outskirts of town.

"Here's some advice for you," Joseph said, brushing the rest of the snow off of his body as Synchronicity faded back into him. "Super speed's only useful if you're _using_ it. Dead or alive, your brain can only work so fast to keep up. Especially if your ego gets in the way."

An inhuman cacophony of rage, followed by another jet engine takeoff, was the spirit's response to his humiliation.

"Crap, he won't be pulling punches anymore," JoJo muttered to himself. "That hit he landed on me earlier was a _glancing_ blow. If he goes all out…"

Joseph knew he only had a few seconds before Razorface hit its top speed and returned to town. If there was ever a time for a brilliant plan, it was now.

"Papyrus!" he shouted. "Remind me how your Stand works again?"

* * *

"GRAAAAAAARGH!"

In spite of the cold chilling his bones, JoJo could feel sweat start to drip down the back of his neck, alongside the drops of blood from his head wounds.

"You know, all the screaming makes it sound like you're warming up to _sing_." He taunted, holding his hand out. Holding his other hand to his forehead to stem the blood flow, Joseph whipped his outstretched hand around, as if he were about to conduct an orchestra surrounding him.

"YOU THINK YOU CAN FUCK WITH ME, YOU SON OF A BITCH?!" Already in the distance, Joseph could see a pinprick of orange and silver at the outskirts of town.

"No, no, you start with _do_ when you warm up, not _mi_!" JoJo flapped his fingers up and down, miming the roar of Razorface's speed to a crescendo. "Then you move to…uh…what's between _do_ and _mi_?"

One of the dogs behind Papyrus's barrier barked an answer.

"Come on, I can't speak dog!... _Re,_ that's it!" Joseph's hand moved up and up, moving along the tempo of Razorface's roar. "Didn't pay attention in music class, but I remember that much! Start again! _Do, re_ , **then** _mi!_ You'll _never_ get on a talent show at this rate!"

In the back of his mind, he realized he was stalling _too_ much. Razorface and its user were already mere meters from him, ready to strike! But it was _way_ too much fun getting a rise out of this prick to quit now! He should ask if any of the monster watching were recording this: he could make a _fortune_ off of the viral video it would no doubt make!

"Now smile for the cameras!" he taunted one more time. "Everyone'll wanna see you wipe out!"

"TOO SLOW, SHITFACE! NOW YOU DIE!"

With that, Matthew's mad, ear-to-ear sneer split open his entire face. He drew back his arm, the Stand surrounding him mirroring his action, and swung.

Joseph's body never stood a chance. He was decapitated in one strike.

"Heh. So much for you, Joestar." Daves abruptly stopped, sending a huge shower of snow from the ground to splatter all over the nearby houses and buildings. "Now it's just the skeleton, and that'll—"

"And right _now_ , you'll say—"

"About as easy as stuffing some nerdlinger in his locker!" both humans said simultaneously.

Right as he turned around to admire his handiwork, the SOUL heard JoJo's triumphant and very not- _dead_ one-liner, and his jaw dropped to the collar of his polo shirt. Without the blurred vision that comes with going hundreds of miles an hour, he could clearly see that what he had attacked was a snowman wearing Joseph's clothes! It wasn't blood running down his Stand's arm, but melted snow from the decoy's severed head!

"Wha-you _tricked me!_ "

"How kind of you to _notice!_ " said Joseph, lunging out of a nearby alley and tackling Razorface to the ground. He gritted his teeth, Synchronicity's outline surrounding his form only doing so much to stop the multitude of cuts to his mostly-exposed skin the enemy Stand inflicted.

"Well, that just bought you a few seconds, pretty boy! 'Cuz guess what?!" Matthew said, laughing madly as he wrenched himself free of JoJo's grip and slashed him across the chest.

"And next," Joseph retorted, even as the blow of the strike propelled him stories above the ground, "is 'you were doomed right from the start, Joestar!' Papyrus, _now_!"

"You were _doomed_ right from the start, Joestar!"

The moment the words left his insubstantial lips, the ghost's eyes widened in shock, utterly baffled as to how his foe seemed to know _everything_ he'd do next.

And that moment of shock was all JoJo and Papyrus needed. As JoJo rose into the air, the vine he had wrapped tightly around Razorface's waist dragged it and Matthew upwards too, his non-existent mass making it easy to move the ghost.

At that exact second, Thriller appeared from behind Griilby's chimney. It snapped its fingers to cancel all force that Earth's gravity exerted on Joseph, right as he grabbed it to stop his momentum.

And, with a triumphant "ARO!" from Synchronicity, Matthew as well.

"What—"" Matthew could only stare in disbelief as he came to a sudden halt in midair. " _WHAT?! FUCKING_ _ **WHAT?!**_ "

"Still think synchronizing stuff's a shitty power?" Joseph asked. He let go of the chimney as he spoke, floating in Thriller's zero-gravity field with his arms folded in triumph. "You need to _move_ in order to use your Stand's power _or_ ability. But I've synchronized your gravitational pull from Earth to _mine!_ And, since you're too far away to touch or repel off anything, you're _helpless!_ You can't move! Not an _inch!_ "

"Oh…oh yeah?!" the SOUL said, failing to hide its rapidly fading confidence. "Then…I'll just _fly_! Ghosts can do that!"

"Not _now_ , you can't!" Papyrus said, crashing through Grillby's window and landing on his feet. "My Blue Attack is still in effect! So, no movement _and_ no flight!

"Sorry, human, but you've been thoroughly _japed_ by the Great Papyrus!" the skeleton cried in glee, stretching out his arms in celebration and to begin his victory dance.

A loud cough stopped him in his tracks.

"Oh…and JoJo, too!" He hastily added, as Joseph grabbed a drain pipe with his vines to pull himself down.

Were the ghost still alive, he would be sweating profusely and hyperventilating as Joseph dragged himself down to Papyrus's level, both of his foes looking right at him. "H…hey, I was just joking, okay? I wasn't going to _kill_ you! I was just having fun!"

"Riiiight, and I'm sure being _murdered_ was fun for that dog you ganked outside the bar!" Joseph retorted dryly.

"I…I…you can't kill me!" Matthew gasped, seizing onto one last thread of a possible escape route from this situation. "I'm already dead, see?"

"We _knew_ that already," Joseph said, grinning viciously as Synchronicity sprung into reality behind him. "And _that_ just means we don't need to hold _back_!"

He paused, noticing how Papyrus was just taking pictures of the trapped human soul with his phone, as their target flailed uselessly in the air to get away. "Hey, bonehead! We'll need to beat him up now!"

"Oh, right!" Fairly exhausted from his heavy magic usage throughout the battle, Papyrus instead elected to have Thriller finish this for him. "Then let's do it!"

Screaming in absolute terror, Matthew flipped himself around to try and build up some form of speed, only to be met with a fist to the face.

Followed by another, and another, and another, and even more after that.

"NYEHENYEHENYEHENYEHE!"

"ARORORORORORORORORA!"

As Matthew's form became increasingly warped and broken from the strikes, Synchronicity and Thriller drew back for a final blow.

"NYEH _HE!_ "

"AROOOOORAAAAA!"

With that, Matthew Daves was sent flying high into the air! As he rocketed further and further into the distance (helpfully directly towards Undyne's house), his howls of pain faded, until nothing but silence remained.

Which was quickly broken as the entire town of Snowdin erupted into unified applause, giving a standing ovation to the heroic duo that had saved the town.

* * *

 **Matthew Daves/Orange SOUL (Razorface): Out of function/RETIRE**

* * *

"Thank you! Thank you!" Joseph said, bowing theatrically before the grateful crowd. "I'll be here all week—actually, no, I'll be gone tomorrow, but we _were_ awesome!"

Beaming at the crowd, JoJo turned around to see Papyrus, only to notice the monster standing still, eyes wide and jaws agape. "Okay, that _was_ awesome and all, but don't get so blown away by what _we_ did."

"Oh? Er, no!" Papyrus stuttered, whipping around from his trance-like gaze on the crowd to face JoJo. "I simply…I always thought I'd get the standing ovations and love from _capturing_ a human. Not from defeating one that had already been vanquished!"

"You take what you can get," JoJo said, shrugging. "Just have to make the best out of the cards you're dealt, until you can grab a better one." His expression soured for a moment. "Doesn't matter!" he continued, his cheer returning. "We just kicked the crap out of some cocky murderer and saved these guys! Who's up for a party!"

While some of the townsfolk returned JoJo's cheers, not all of them did. Some looked uneasily to one another, and not all of the guards had shaken themselves back to a professional mindset.

"Oh, right. He _did_ kill someone." JoJo sighed, scratching at the back of his head, than wincing at some of his wounds he didn't notice in the rush of battle. "Yeah, that's a mood-kille—okay, I'm just leaving before I dig myself deeper."

He waved goodbye to the crowd, and made it all of two steps before the adrenaline from the fight wore off, and he slumpd against the wall of Grillby's bar in pain.

"Heh…damn. I got more worn out than I thought," he muttered to himself, glancing over at Papyrus, who had now joined in the diminished festivities going on in spite of several monsters' clear discomfort. "I should really be more careful if—no, _when_ —I get jumped again."

"hey, what did I miss?'

Before he could hobble over to the smashed snowman to grab his clothes, Joseph looked over to see Sans casually stroll over from the forest, covered in snow but otherwise no more worse for wear.

"Hey! Good to see you're alright," said JoJo, as he tried fruitlessly to brush the snow off of his scarf and squeeze it dry. "So, hang on…you survived a hit right from that bastard even when it killed that dog. And you know a lot about Stands already…"

"looks like you've found me out," Sans admitted, raising his hands in a gesture of mock defeat. "yeah, i've got a stand. _had_ a stand. it's complicated. i'll explain it to you at our place. you look like you can use a break."

"Huh?" Joseph looked down at himself, seeing that he was bleeding a _lot_ more than he expected. Probably the cold numbing some of the pain. "Oh, right. Sure."

* * *

"—used to work Asgore?" Joseph asked. "The King? The one who said to kill all humans?"

"yep. i helped out with some research on stuff, and we found out stands exist. 'cept only his and her majesty, me, and one or two other test subjects managed to get them safely." Sans reclined back on his couch, catching Joseph's look of suspicion. "what's wrong?"

"…I don't know much about him, but he sounds like a real piece of work. I mean, he ordered _genocide_ , right?"

"the king? Fluffybuns?" Here, Sans laughed out loud. "only because we need the SOULs to get out. he's a great guy, actually: wouldn't hurt a fly unless that fly was the key to saving his people. and it's not like it's a big deal—humans almost never end up here, so why worry about that order?"

"He's a big pushover! You don't need to worry about him!"

Both occupants looked to see Papyrus walk in the front door, wearing a lorel wreath around his neck and beaming even wider than usual. "We _were_ talking about the King, right? I'm sure he'll just _let you go_ if you ask him—"

The soft static noises of the aged TV in the room suddenly cut to a cheery jingle, as the channel abruptly switched over to a visible picture.

"speaking of which, isn't it time for the month's royal address?" Sans asked. "here, you can see him now."

"Sans, why didn't you tell me?!" Papyrus demanded as the screen cut to a colorful podium placed in the midst of a serene garden of golden flowers. "I could've made popped spaghetti to enjoy the show!"

Before JoJo could question how a dish like that could even _exist_ , much less be any good, the King stepped up to speak. JoJo's eyes widened. The big, white-furred figure, the horns, the face…he looked just like Toriel!

He raised his hand to his throat, clearing his voice. "Ahem…howdy, everybody!"

" 'Howdy?' " JoJo repeated incredulously, before being shushed by Papyrus.

"I have a lot to talk about this month, so I won't waste your valuable time!" Asgore's facial expression changed in an instant, taking on an air of melancholy. "I…do have to start with some bad news. Earlier today, I was taking a stroll through this very garden…and I heard a great commotion deeper in the castle. By the time…I do apologize, I said I wouldn't waste time!

"Anyways…the human SOULs we've gathered over the years to break the Barrier…have escaped." Instantly, before the reporters or members of the press standing just behind the camera could panic or belt out questions, he raised his hand in a calming gesture. "Now, the _good_ news is that we have already taken the sort of power from them we need to _destroy_ the Barrier! So don't worry: even with them missing, we can still destroy with them gone! We're still on time!

"Having said that," he said, amidst the vast sigh of relief across the Underground, "this means that there are still six very dangerous SOULs on the loose, and there is no telling what they may do. I have already ordered the Royal Guard to increase patrols and be on the lookout, to ensure you all stay safe. And because they don't have a physical form anymore, they _should_ be clearly leaking power everywhere. All of you fine folks at home just need to keep an eye out for a huge, uncontrolled magical aura spilling everywhere, and that will tell you if one of them is nearby."

In the midst of this speech, something appeared behind Asgore, holding the very same SOUL JoJo and Papyrus had defeated earlier in the day. In its silken glove, the SOUL had regressed to the form of a glowing orange heart, writhing against the steel and shining chains that bound it. It learned close to Asgore's floppy ear, its pounpadour brushing against his horns as it whispered to its master.

"Oh." His smile suddenly became quite forced, staring at the SOUL struggling for freedom in the figure's hand. "You see! We've already recaptured one…er, thanks to the efforts of the Royal Guard over in Snowdin!"

"ASGORE KNOWS WHO I AM!" Papyrus shrieked, holding his hands up to his cheekbones and blushing. In spite of not having any blood.

"Great. _Great_." Joseph massaged his temples, groaning. "So with all of _them_ gone, now I'll get jumped even _more_ by monsters and guards trying to kill me….At least most people don't know what humans look like, so I can still—"

"So we will be able to take care of everything!" Asgore concluded. "Anyways, the broadcaster will now cut to some images of humans and what they look like, so in case one of the SOULs shows up, you can be as prepared as can be."

"SON OF A BITCH!"

JoJo sank deeper into the couch, and his shouts broke through Papyrus's gloating and boasting about being ahead of the curve. "Eh? What's wrong? Everything is just fine!"

In response, Joseph could only facepalm.

* * *

In a house just an hour's walk nearby, someone else watched the broadcast just as it cut over to more mundane topics, such as Asgore's announcements of rising stocks and new job opportunities in Snowdin and Sewer.

"One," she confirmed into the phone held to her ear canal. "You saw one _before_ the attack."

The monster on the other end said yes.

"Thanks," she said, barely holding in her enthusiasm in a desperate attempt to be professional while on the job. "We'll send a stipend for the tip-off. Stay safe, citizen."

She hung up, turned off the TV by throwing a spear right at the off button, and strode over to her armor.

As she put on her gear and donned her helmet, Undyne grinned viciously. Time to save the world.

 **-TO BE CONTINUED**

* * *

Razorface  
User: Matthew Daves (aka Bravery)

 **Stats:**  
Power: B  
Speed: S  
Precision: D  
Durability: C  
Range: E  
Learning: C

 **Abilities:**

Phasing: By moving beyond a walking pace (or whenever its user runs), Razorface and its user gain immunity to any attack by virtue of their molecules moving so rapidly they pass through any strike. The user can also choose what to pass through or what to use as a solid surface, letting it run up walls and ceilings without just breaking through them.

Super Speed: As evidenced by its unique S rakning in Speed, Razorface is the fastest known Stand short of any Stand possessing time manipulating abilities, surpassing even Silver Chariot and Tower of Grey. The only other known Stands possessing S rankings are -CLANG-


	4. Ch 4: Undyne's Attack! Battle in Sewer!

"you sure you wanna head out so soon?" Sans asked, only half-looking at JoJo as he repacked his bag. "i mean, there's still a party going on. grillby just said on undernet that he's offering a free drink to everyone, and i can do with a ketchup cocktail right now."

"I can't risk—ketchup cocktail?" JoJo asked, pausing for a moment. "You know what, forget it," he continued, tossing the small stack of comic books, half-full package of spider doughnuts, and all his other loose belongings in his knapsack. "Because of that little Powerpoint on TV, I need to get outta town as soon as possible."

"you saved the whole town from an angry ghost," Sans countered, helpfully doing nothing to help JoJo get ready to leave. "i don't think they'll try to fight you after that."

"Knowing how I got jumped every few steps outside town? At _most_ , they'd give me a head start. At _worst_ , killed on sight." The human zipped his bag shut, then paused for a second. "Wait a second…I've got an idea on how to get out safely. You wouldn't happen to have a bigger bag anywhere, would you?"

"papyrus has a reusable shopping bag he uses when he buys noodles," Sans replied, immediately catching onto to JoJo's idea. "you're lucky stands can be seen by monsters. humans without 'em can't. see them, that is. when we did research on them, the one asgore adopted couldn't see them at all."

"There was a human that _wasn't_ killed on sight down here?" JoJo asked, even as he climbed into the shopping bag. Slamming his palm into the wall, he left a thorn behind, and the consistency of the bag hardened to be able to sustain his weight.

"You know, if I didn't have to go now, I'd have a lot of questions to field," Joseph continued, climbing into the bag as he spoke. An aura of rich purple blazed into existence around him, as Synchronicity emerged and slung the bag (and its master) across its shoulder.

"you have a phone, right? We can just text later."

"You're leaving already?" Papyrus asked, popping his head out of the kitchen. The distracting amounts of steam pouring out from the stove didn't seem to phase him. If JoJo didn't know Papyrus was harmless from experience, the visual of steam pouring out of every hole in his skull from whatever dish he had tried his luck at today would have been _terrifying_. "I understand you want to avoid the Royal Guard, but they have a really big garrison in Waterfall."

JoJo sighed, ducking into his bag out of sight. "Which means I need a new plan to avoid getting my head blown off," he concluded, as Synchronicity opened the front door and barely managed to avoid suspiciously shrinking away from the pack of dogs passing by on patrol. "Any chance you guys can help out?"

"I would _love to_ , my friend," Papyrus said, placing particular emphathis on those last words, "but I still need to cook for the potluck at Doggo's funeral. I _can_ give you some food for your trip, though!"

"Uh…thanks?" Joseph asked, as Thriller emerged in a flash of blue light, dramatically thrust its hand through Papyrus's ribs, and withdrew a plate of pasta. Both Stand and User's eyes glinted with childish delight as it presented its pasta to JoJo.

"I normally hide this inside my ribcage, just in case I were to be asked on a date out of the blue and needed a gift…but I believe it will more than suffice as a token of our friendship!"

Normally, Joseph would have just thrown this _thing_ masquerading as food away. However, Papyrus was looking at him so _earnestly_ , and magic healing food _was_ magic healing food, regardless of its taste.

"…Thaaaaaanks," JoJo said slowly, making sure the food was _very_ secure in its Tupperware before sliding it into the bag he was riding in. "It'd be _better_ if you'd come along to back me up, but something tells me you _won't_ , even if I ask nicely."

"I _would_ , if not for time constraints!" Papyrus objected. "And Sans is too lazy to lift a _finger_ for us, I'd imagine!"

"hey, I'm _plenty_ busy," Sans countered, hopping on the couch and pulling the TV remote to his hand with a flick of his wrist. "i've got a marathon of soaps to catch, plus a break, plus a lunch break, plus—"

"We get it!" Joseph and Papyrus exclaimed simultaneously.

"However," Papyrus said, stepping out of the kitchen as he had Thriller continue (trying to) cook the spaghetti dish he dimly remembered seeing on TV once, "you may have another option."

"Okay, I'm all ears," JoJo said through Synchronicity, as it zipped up the bag with its user inside.

Papyrus told him.

"…No!" Joseph yelled, unzipping the bag with his Stand and popping his head out of it to glare at Papyrus. " _Hell no!_ There's no way in _hell_ I'm going there!"

"But it's a new town!" the skeleton said, pointing out the window to the conveniently placed entrance to the new settlement. "There shouldn't be too many guards there, and it connects to Hotland and New Home as well as Waterfall!"

"I have _standards, damnit!_ I'm not crawling through _there_! I've played through enough video games to—"

"it's either that or risk getting turned into a shish-kebab by the guard in waterfall."

Joseph's nostrils flared, realizing that Sans had a very good point. It was either going through the obvious route and getting attacked and likely killed at every turn, or…the unpleasant route.

"Okay. Fine." Jumping out the door, Synchronicity darted around the house, and lifted up the grate covering the entrance to Sewer. "But I'm billing all the showers' I'll need to you!" JoJo yelled, slamming the portal shut and continuing on the next leg of his adventure.

* * *

 **Monster Oddyssey**

 **Chapter 4:**

 **In Which JoJo Traverses a Sewer Level (against his better judgment), Undyne Refuses to Tip, and Both gain deep appreciation for Urban Infrastructure.**

* * *

As he had learned when he could first summon his Stand, Joseph could see through its eyes. It was as if he were in two places at once—though, perhaps a more apt metaphor would be as it the Stand's vision was a separate tab in a web browser from his own eyes. The screen was split evenly between both tabs, so that he could see two sights at once.

Which was very helpful at this moment, given that Joseph would have no idea where the _hell_ he was going were it not for Synchronicity, due to being in a bag. He climbed down the ladder, eventually touching down onto a concrete floor.

Though his Stand lacked a nose, the smell was _far_ less nauseating that JoJo had feared—more akin to faint sulfur and eggs compared to what he had expected.

He dimly recalled that he hadn't seen a _single_ bathroom in all of his time through the Uunderground. Nor had he needed to _use_ one. Then, he remembered that monster food wasn't technically _real_ , and it made sense. He hadn't needed to take a piss since getting here, and monster food was 100% digestable, so Sewer was _much_ cleaner than he had expected.

Which was fortunate for the many monsters living here, JoJo mused, as he stepped onto the sidewalk and began walking through town. Though Sewer's titular water canal _wasn't_ quite crystal clear (or sanitary at all), that didn't stop a large portion of the population from comutting across the town on boats or even just swimming through it. Through his Stand, JoJo could see a tree-like monster carrying a shipment of bricks in its hollowed-out chest as it drifted through town. A fishing pole hung by itself in air, reeling in its line to pull out a grinning, arm-less reptilian kid eating its bait. It whirred in anger, then tossed the child onto a school barge, where he ignored the impact and immediately jogged forward to pay the bus fare.

Synchronicity shrank away from the edge, barely avoiding a disgruntled golem-esque monster's sharp shoulder as it passed by on a small, wooden boat. Muttering about pedestrians, the monster squirmed in place, somehow not breaking the tiny vessel and sending it and its robe-clad, hooded driver into the drink.

"Same to you!" Joseph barked through Synchronicity. He stopped himself before he could get into a longer rant, as two titans clad in the Royal Guard's armor passed him by, gossiping about some TV show and discussing something about whiskey and cigars. While they weren't paying Synchronicity any mind, as the nine-foot-tall figure in full flowery bloom wasn't too out of place in this veritable menagerie of varied monsters, undue attention would _not_ help his case.

Nor would his stomach, JoJo realized, as he felt his belly rumble in hunger. He hadn't eaten in…well, a while. While he did have the food from that bakesale and Papyrus's abomination of noodles and charcoal, he would prefer to have more filling fare, and that Italian place right down the street looked good.

Stretching out its palm, Synchronicity whipped out a vine and hurled the door open. Whistling in a probably ill-advised attempt to act natural, Joseph entered the bar.

And, shortly after, a figure clad in black armor leaped out of Sewer's river, conjured a spear in a burst of crackling white light, and followed suit into the eatery.

* * *

" _Spaghetti al nero de what?!_ Why the hell is it _black?!_ "

"It's the entrée on today's three course meal, sir," the anglerfish-like beast patiently explained from the fishtank next to the table. "After the garlic bread you ordered, the next course has a more pronounced taste—"

"It's _black_!" Synchronicity bellowed, viciously tapping the tank and sending the waiter shrinking behind his coral reef in surprise. "Who the hell drops _ink_ all over pasta?!"

"It is black," the waiter explained, wheeling his tank back slightly to avoid another aggressive poke at his domicile, "because our chef uses her own ink as a sauce, to produce a meal which perfectly blends pasta and seafood. I assure you, it's perfectly sanitary and safe to eat—otherwise, the humans wouldn't have eaten it themselves!"

"…A human dish, huh?" Synchronicity asked. Slowly, it lifted the fork from the table, twirling it around in its mysterious meal. It lifted a small forkful up to its mouth, and sucked it down its gullet.

Joseph felt the taste pop through his own taste buds in turn, and immediately his pupils dialated. That _taste_ …it was _amazing!_ If this is what expensive food tasted, he really _had_ missed out on what his family had used to splurge on before…well, it was _way_ better than he expected.

"This is _great!_ " he mumbled through his Stand, already going in for another forkful and savoring every noodle of the food.

Sighing in relief, the waiter pulled up his notepad and withdrew his pen. "Very good, sir. Now, for dessert, we have gelato (jn a variety of flavors), or strawberry shortcake. Which would you prefer?"

"Whuh?" Synchronicity muttered through a mouthful of spaghetti, inadvertently splattering ink over the table, and through proxy from the mystic laws of Stands, the walls of Joseph's bag. "Already?"

"We are expecting a large party later today," the fish explained, moving its tank again to allow an armored titan access to a seat at the bar, "and we need ample time to prepare food for such a large group. We will not bring it out until you're finished with your second course, sir."

"Oh," JoJo commented, putting down Synchronicity's fork and taking a sip of (clean) water. "I'll have the gelato, I guess. That's a fancy way of saying ice cream, right?"

"The cake's better," muttured the guard, stretching back on their stool and accidentally prodding at the bag with the spear hooked to their waist.

Synchronicity winced in pain as its user was jabbed in the side, the bag's enhanced structure only helping so much to blunt the weapon's impact. "Hey, watch it! You'll break my stuff!" Gingerly, Joseph leaned away from the spear now imbedded in his hiding space, prodding the tip with a finger and noticing that it was, indeed, _very_ sharp. If he had been only a bit to the left…

"Sorry." The guard said. They rose to their feet, and JoJo couldn't help but notice the menacing aura this figure cast. Though it was only barely taller than he was before his impromptu muscle transfusion with Papyrus, Joseph felt an aura of _danger_ and foreboring…ness…emanating off them. And they were just _standing_ there!

"I'll get that," they went on, grabbing the spear with a gauntlet-clad hand and pulling.

"Did you _hear_ me?!" Synchronicity hissed. "Back off! That's delicate stuff in there— _I'll_ grab the spear!"

"It's…just a bag." The guard showed no signs of stopping, grunting slightly as their weapon became caught in the wood-like fabric of the sack. "It's not like it's anything really dange—"

With a fatal _riiiiiip_ , the bag tore open, and Joseph's argument was cut short by virtue of coming face-to-face with his opponent.

The face he _didn't_ want any of the King's guards to see. His own.

"Uh…"

For a long moment, the two simply stared at one another. Obscured by their helmet's beaver, JoJo could nevertheless sense the previous, brutal indifference the stranger possessed rapidly fading, swapped out in a second for shaking _rage_.

"You'll ruin my venbtriloquist act!" he quickly spat through Synchronicity, picking himself up in his Stand's arms and propping his body on its knees. "If you stab it, you'll screw me out of work, and I'll have to sell my—"

The act clearly did _not_ work, as the spear instantly at JoJo's throat attested. It was only due to quickly pushing back on the table that saved him, the thrust only grazing his forehead as he tumbled backwards, off his chair and onto the floor.

"Human," the guard hissed, righteous fury barely kept in check as more spears phased into existence behind them. "You won't fool me. For the good of all monsters, I will—"

"Get lost! ARO!"

With a sharp kick, Synchronicity sent the table flying into the air, blocking the volley of spears and stopping them from impaling its master to the floor.

By the time Undyne smacked the table across and brushed her way past the shocked and fleeing patrons of the restaurant, she caught a glimpse of JoJo punching the window to shards, jumping through the portal into the murky waters below.

* * *

Joseph quickly realized that he was _not_ in the best of positions right now.

First, he hadn't paid for his meal yet, and any restaurant which could make pasta that good didn't deserve a dine and dash.

Second, he was now thoroughly submerged in water, meaning that all of his stuff, from his comic books to his phone, were probably soaked. And while he could probably figure out a way to fix them with Synchronicity, it was still a pain in the ass.

Third, the Tupperware containing [Papyrus's spaghetti] had burst open when he hit the water. Now, some of the stale noodles wrapped around his legs, leaving him struggling to swim.

And fourth, there was a _giant tank of a monster plowing through the river surrounded by a giant swarm of spears._ That should've been much higher on his priority list, really.

"I was in the _middle_ of something!" Joseph yelled through his Stand, already lashing a vine from his wrist to a conveniently-placed lamppost. "What kind of cop tries to kill someone when they're not doing a damn thinGAAH!"

Though he managed to hurl himself out of the water (and out of the way of most of the spears careening towards him), Joseph still grunted in pain as a few projectiles pierced him through his ankle and thigh.

"Seven SOULs," said the armored figure, ignoring JoJo's words. "That's what we need to break the [Barrier] and save our people. The power of seven human SOULs.

"Six," she continued, as Joseph grabbed a handful of the spaghetti al nero which had fallen into the bag and crammed it into his mouth, healing his wounds. "We have the energy of six human SOULs so far. And you're _not_ one of the escaped ones. Do you understand?"

"Yeah! I understand that you're a _dumbass!_ "

Though she was still covered from head to toe in armor, Joseph could still see his foe twitch in agitation.

Out of any type of opponent he could fight, it was the driven and determined ones he had the most problems with. Almost all the fights he'd won—on the surface _and_ underground—he had done by distracting or throwing his aggressor off their game, letting him win handily with a clever scheme.

But foes like this…were infuriating! When you fight someone with tunnel vision, there's no room for distracting or fooling them, because all they think about is beating you!

However…if he could provoke enough of a reaction out of her to throw her off her game…

"Where the hell do you get off on saying you're doing monsters a favor by _murdering someone?_ I get the [Barrier] needs a ton of power to break, but did you even _try_ to find another way?!"

"You're human," Undyne went on, through gritted teeth, "and you're the last SOUL we need. _Got that?!_ Don't worm your way out of this. You _deserve_ it."

"What? Just because I'm human?!"

JoJo climbed to his feet, ignoring the crowd of monsters already gathering in the river to take videos of the climactic battle. Or at least, what they _thought_ was going to be an epic fight.

Not if he could help it.

"You don't see me _killing_ people just because they're not human!" he continued, noting with some satisfaction that his foe was clearly losing her composure, her armor doing little to mask her shakes of rage. And…was that _steam_ coming out of the sides of her helmet—around where her ears would be?

"Justify that all you want with ancient history and all that bullshit, but there's _no way_ you can be so high and mighty when your plan to save everyone involves _genocide!_ "

Undyne's eye twitched behind her helmet.

" _That's_ how you wanna do this then?!" she demanded, angrily dismissing her spear and yanking her helmet off.

Joseph could tell he was fighting a woman from the voice, but he wasn't expecting a giant fish behind the armor.

If she weren't missing an eye…or, well, a _fish_ …she would be sort of cute. Not his type, but if circumstances were different, he might tap—

"NGAAAAAAAH!"

Undyne's roar was so loud, it actually pushed JoJo back from the sheer sonic force of her howl! Leaning forward to regain his balance, Joseph smirked. Now that he'd broken her singleminded concentration…

"Then we'll _skip_ the speech, _human!_ " Undyne spat, bile rising in her throat. "You're standing in the way of everyone's hopes and dreams! I thought humans were supposed to be compassionate and smart? But _you_?! You're just a _jackass!_ "

"Am I now?" Joseph said, layering as much exaggerated contempt and smarmy overtones as he could possibly fake in his speech.

"We're trying to _save our civilization here_ , and you're treating it as a _joke?!_ " she roared, pulling her spear back into reality and pointing it menacingly at JoJo.

As she continued her monologue, she failed to notice Joseph reaching behind his back, into the bag she had torn earlier.

"We've been down here for _thousands_ of years, while you _humans_ have been living it up in the sunlight!" Undyne's scowl twisted into a vicious, sadistic smile. "But that ends _today!_ You've met your match! All the monsters who've suffered because of _your_ people, all of their dreams that have withered away…I'll send them right through my spear and—"

In the middle of her speech, Joseph took the time to remove the top off of Papyrus's pasta, grab a huge handful of it with Synchronicity, and throw it right at Undyne's exposed face.

It flew true, majestically through the air, and splattered all over Undyne's face before she could even react to dodge.

She froze, as the indescribable taste of legendarily bad cooking dribbled down her mouth and all over her face.

"N….NGAAAAAAH!" She abruptly dropped her spear, clawing at her face in an attempt to get the _awful thing_ off of her. "WHAT THE HELL IS _THIS?!_ IT'S LIKE MONSTER DUST AND _CHARCOAL_! WHO FIGHTS WITH _FOOD?!_ "

Joseph broke into a huge grin, laughing. So much for a big, serious battle!

"That was just the warm-up!" he announced, sending his Stand sprinting forward with a fist at the ready. "Here's the _curveball!_ "

"ARO!"

With a sharp cracking sound, Synchronicity's fist slammed into Undyne's plate armor.

However, rather than the Stand (and by extension, JoJo) breaking their hand on the solid steel alloy, it was the _armor_ that gave way. The breastplate caved in from the impact, and the fist carried on through to deliver a painful, if weakened, punch to her abdomen.

"GRRAAHA!" Undyne fell backwards, then swiftly kicked up from her prone position and shook her head vigorously to get rid of the trap. "So, humans are stronger than I thought! Guess I'll be going _all out_ to take you down!"

"You'd think that," Joseph stated, calling his Stand back as the duo entered a stand-off, "but not this time. I'm not as strong as I used to be, thanks of how I saved Papyrus's life—I'm sure he told you that, right?" he continued, noticing Undyne snort in disbelief and bring her spear back to a ready stance.

"Before you do that, I think you should probably get that armor checked," he continued. "Especially that collar."

"What?" That didn't make any sense-the human's blow had landed in her _midsection_.

Undyne looked down, and her eyes widened as she saw the purple thorn stuck deep in her ruined chestplate.

"When I threw that spaghetti, I hid a [thorn] in it," JoJo explained. "Not only did the shitty cooking throw you off your game, but I used my thorn to give your armor the same brittleness of those noodles!"

"You really think I _needed_ the armor? NGAAAAAAH!"

Undyne tossed her spear high in the air, then _flexed_. Her armor cracked into pieces, revealing a surprisingly lanky body beneath, albeit still frighteningly muscular. With grace that betrayed hours upon hours of a practiced maneuver, she snatched her spear out of the air, twirled it around as if she were wielding a baton, then resumed pointing it at JoJo. "That just _slowed me down!_ You won't be able to trick me again, human!"

"Again with 'human,' huh? Guess she doesn't _care_ who I am or that I'm _not_ a genocidal moron like Matthew." Joseph quickly skimmed the area. Then, the proverbial lightbulb in his head shone bright, like a diamond in the rough!

"I don't _need_ to trick you again!" JoJo smirked, raising his hand to display the vines now trailing down his entire arm. "In fact, the trick _I've_ got in mind will end this fight before you can throw even one more spear!"

"Oh, _really_?!" said Undyne sarcastically.

"My next move is a technique passed down through my family line for _generations_ ," he said, bringing out his Stand to mirror his mocking, purposefully exaggerated copy of Undyne's stance. "It's our _secret weapon_! And you've got _no hope_ of countering it—it's _never failed to win_!"

"Showing off a [secret technique]?!" Undyne repeated, grinning viciously. "Ha! I should've _known_! All humans have special named skills they use in fights! Martial arts, jutsu…you _all_ have them! It _must_ be how you won the war!"

"Of course it is!" JoJo declared.

In reality, he had _no idea_ what she was going on about. She was probably one of those people who grew up on _all_ the cartoons, and thought the world actually worked on the same rules.

Or maybe she was just crazy, period. It didn't really matter, did it?

"Alright, then…" JoJo stretched, then leaned forward, drew his arms tight to his sides, and gave Undyne a grin of his own. "You ready to see my _secret technique?_ "

"YEAH!" Undyne roared back, not noticing how the crowd was currently split between cheering along with her or just laughing their asses off from the melodrama in front of them. "GO AHEAD AND TRY! I'LL SHOW YOU JUST HOW STRONG WE MONSTERS CAN BE!"

"THEN HERE IT COMES!"

"BRING IT ON!"

"NOW, I'M GOING TO…"

"COME AND GET ME!"

Joseph's grin widened, stretching across his entire face.

"RUN AWAAAAAAAAY!"

Immediately after saying that, JoJo turned tail and bolted as fast as he possibly could away from Undyne, his arms pumping and legs spinning into a blur of motion.

"YEEEEAAA-"

Undyne stopped mid cheer, gaping as the human sped away across town.

It took her brain a couple of seconds to catch up with what she had just witnessed. For a few moments, she stood there, mouth agape and remaining eye nearly popping out of her skull in disbelief.

Then, she regained her senses, _roared_ , and lunged forwards in hot pursuit.

* * *

"GET BACK HERE, YOU COWARD!"

"I THOUGHT YOU _WANTED_ TO SEE MY SECRET TECHNIQUE!" JoJo yelled back at Undyne, as he weaved and ran all across town, with the monster in hot pursuit mere paces behind. "THIS IS IT! BEWEEN WINNING A FIGHT AND GETTING MY ASS KICKED, I'LL PICK NOT EVEN STARTING IT!"

In reality, that was only part of his reason. While he had already developed a deep enmity with the Royal Guard leader, he was also taking the time he had bought in this maneuver to plan up a way to defeat her.

Obviously, she was too strong for him to take head on, even before he lost around fifty pounds of muscle. The only reason his Stand had broken through her armor was due to its ability.

And this did _not_ look like the kind of opponent he could escape entirely. Already, they had gone dozens of city blocks and she showed no signs of tiring. He really didn't want to kill her, since she _was_ just doing her job—albeit in the most dickish manner possible—so he'd have to find some way of taking her out of the equation and still get away in one piece.

Which was looking more and more daunting, as she was getting ever closer and _shit that was his leg that hurt._

Somehow managing to push past the pain, Joseph hurled a vine at the weather vane perched atop a nearby docked boat (no doubt for purely decorative purposes, due to the total lack of weather underground), and had Synchronicity pull with all of its might. Before any more of Undyne's spears could strike him, he sailed into the distance, her projectiles splashing harmlessly into the water.

"Y'know, you're probably wasting valuable time chasing me with all the other SOULs on the loose," JoJo commented, rolling safely onto the main deck and pulling the spear out of his leg. "I was just eating _lunch_ , but who knows what _those_ psychos are up to? You couldn't just skip me and come back later? Or, maybe, _never?!_ "

Undyne didn't respond. Through words or through more spears. In fact, she had totally vanished: JoJo couldn't see her anywhere on the dock.

"Where'd she go?"

The water bubbled below him.

Too late, Joseph realied that Undyne had a noticably piscine appearance, and had even vaguely smelled like seafood.

Angry seafood.

Which suddenly clicked as Undyne rocketed out of the water, speared his shoulder with her spear, and dragged him by his wound to the murky waters below.

* * *

"No more running now!" Undyne triumphantly announced, as both she and JoJo hit the seafloor. She took a moment to breathe all the air from her lungs, the gills on the side of her neck opening to allow her shonen hero monologue to continue.

She swiftly and painfully yanked out her spear, ignoring the human's struggling. Which was getting him nowhere.

Literally.

As Joseph barely managed to catch his breath for a few seconds (at most) worth of air, he rolled his eyes. _Another_ damn color curse!

Now he looked _green!_ She'd turned him into a Kermit the Frog cosplayer!

"As long as you're under my [Green Attack,] you can't run away! You're _glued_ right where you are, human," she announced, shivering slightly due to her armor no longer existing to insulate against the cool canal water.

Joseph struggled to move, but true to Undyne's word, his feet were stuck to the bedrock floor.

"Did you _really_ think you could run away forever?" She asked. Suddenly, she pulled a spear into reality with her free hand, then hurled it at JoJo's feet. It stuck deep inside the hard floor, the light above reflecting off of the shining shaft and the water above to create a dazzling display of vibrant colors.

"Just to _prove_ how out of your league you are, I'll let you use one of my spears to _try_ and block my attacks!" Undyne grinned, gills flapping as her voice rose ever higher in hamminess. "No matter how hard you or your ghost…thing…fight, you'll _never_ beat me! In one hand, I hold the _determination_ of all monsterkind, and in my other, the spear which will pierce what are you doing?"

She cut off her speech as she noticed that JoJo's flailing had become even more pronounced. He clutched at his throat, air bubbles escaping from his open mouth, and pointed upwards with one finger.

He was also flipping her off with the same finger, but he meant both possible interpretations of that gesture.

"Trying to get away again?" Undyne sneered. "All that smooth talk you've fooled Papyrus with won't work on—"

"Can't…breathe…asshole!" Joseph managed to gurgle with what remained of his breath. "Not…fair…fight!"

Undyne glared at him. Then, she walked forward, grabbed JoJo by the collar, and jumped upwards out of the water.

* * *

JoJo coughed, spitting water out of his lungs and generally trying not to choke on his own tongue. _Still_ being green and glued to the floor was not helping matters.

For some reason, Undyne was standing off to the side, just _staring_ at him. Occasionally, she would summon more spears (which had become a pile reaching to her waist by now), or sharpen her primary spear while glaring menacingly at him.

"If you wanna kill me so badly, what the hell are you waiting for?!" Joseph demanded, once he could finally speak a full sentence without gagging up more water.

"I said it before, and I'll say it again: I won't beat you without giving you a fair fight," Undyne repeated, kicking one of the spears to JoJo's feet as he stood up. "That means we both start as full power, then you, the challenged, get a turn. Then _I_ , the challenger, gets a turn. Then you, me, you, me, and we go on until you're _dead_!"

As she spoke, Joseph saw that she never took her eyes off of him once—wheras before, she would gesture, look dramatically all over the place, and figuratively chew all of the nearby scenery.

JoJo remembered that Papyrus mentioned his Blue Attack only functioned so long as he kept concentrating on the spell, and it wore off once he had beaten him. So, all he had to do was break Undyne's focus again and he could enact the next stage of his plan. Which was only a theory so far, but it was better than nothing!

"Do you _understand_?!" She asked. "Now, hurry up and take your turn so you can die quickly!"

"You ever stop to _listen_ to yourself?" asked JoJo. "Look, humans used to have duels with guns and pistols at dawn where they took turns blowing each other to bits… _hundreds_ of years ago…but _no one_ does that anymore!"

"Well, it's how _we_ do it down here!" Undyne said, folding her arms in frustration. "Humans must've forgotten how to fight properly, judging by _you_ and your…cheating! Who _does that_?!"

"I do. But only for _you_ , lady.

"Annnnd I'm done," he said, lowering the loaned spear to his side and putting his hand to his face, bending his fingers back on his forehead to crack his knuckles.

"…You're wasting your turn?" Undyne asked in confusion. Then, her face twisted in irritation and anger. "Fine by me! So I'll just _finish you off_ while you're wasting—"

Joseph interrupted her by throwing the spear right at her head. Undyne's rant died in her throat as she quickly ducked, the spear breaking the tie on her ponytail as the weapon flew through the air and through her hair tie.

"What the _hell_?!" she demanded, standing up again and blowing her hair out of her face. "I wasn't done attacking yet! Quit breaking the rules?"

"Rules?" JoJo echoed. "I don't see a referee or a scoreboard around here," he continued, gesturing around. "The only one saying that's a rule is _you!_ "

Undyne's eye twitched, as she yanked out a spare hair tie from her pocket and tied her bangs out of her vision.

"I think it's called…reification?" Joseph tapped his chin in thought. He pulled out his phone to look it up—amazingly, it still worked even after being dragged through water several times, but he didn't have a signal.

Also the browser was terrible and the keypad was nearly impossible to use. Was this thing made in the 90's?

"It's when you take something mad-made and convince the whole world that it's something natural. Can't say I remember where I heard that-must've been in one of those crappy afterschool PSAs I had to watch when I could use the TV!"

"I don't _care_ that you know some big words…and you probably just made that crap up!" Undyne retorted, drawing her arm back for a throw. " _No one_ messes with the rules of a duel. That's not something someone made up, it's _a fact_!"

She threw another spear, which was promptly knocked out of the air by the very same spear she had given back to JoJo in between rants. The weapons lost all velocity, fell to the ground, and rolled into the water.

" _Take your God-damn turns, you dumb human!"_

Undyne clearly wasn't the kind of person who had been very composed to begin with. She had barely managed to keep a flimsy air of professionalism at the start of the fight, and had now devolved into a twitching, howling, furious fish which would make Jaws look like that timid goldfish JoJo had won once at a fair. Clearly, though, she was tougher than that poor fish, and wouldn't die off after being gently rocked a few times on the bus ride home.

In fact, though JoJo was doing his best to turn the tables on her, he was _losing_ , no matter how much he hated to admit it! If he couldn't dispel the [green attack] and lure her to _that place_ not ten feet away soon, he might be screwed!

Not that he would ever let her know that, though.

"So, you seem like the fun kind of person!" Joseph said, deflecting some spears with his loaned weapon and taking the time to check for a wi-fi signal in between volleys. Still no luck, sadly—looks like the workers still in the midst of building the town hadn't quite finished doing the routers yet. "After I kick your ass, how's about you and me go and get a bite to eat?"

"W…WHAT?!" Undyne bellowed, the next barrage of spears she'd pulled into reality vanishing mid-air as she gaped in shock. "Are you _hitting on me_?!"

"I am!"

"In the _middle of the fight_?!"

"Yes! I am!" Joseph confirmed, summoning Synchronicity while Undyne was distracted to retaliate with a handful of spears and a loud "ARO!" to counterattack. "I mean, even though you're trying to kill me and all, I don't wanna hold it against you! After all, even after every monster and their mother tried to cave my sexy face in, they're nice enough when I kick their ass to give me a tip for the trouble and send me a friend request afterwards. Isn't that a _rule_ monsters follow!"

"You… _shut up_!" Sweat pouring down her forehead, Undyne's sole eye was now clearly bloodshot in sheer _hatred_ , and every part of her body reflected her single-minded determination to _kill_ the human in front of her. "Don't you use those words against me! You won't _trick me_ like all those other monsters you swindled!"

While this wasn't quite the reaction JoJo wanted to get out of her, he did notice that his skin briefly flickered back to a normal, non nautious-looking complexion as Undyne's spell lapsed in her rage.

Her eye narrowed, and the spell resumed. "You're not getting out of this! Date, distraction, or whatever the _hell_ prank you're trying to pull, I _will_ kill you, for the good of all monsters!"

Well, if this murder-route was working, he may as well go full hog.

"And that's your turn! You're done!"

Undyne's free fist clenched. Joseph saw a vein pop out of her head.

"What, you think those big, holier-than-thou speeches are a free shot in a fight?" he sarcastically asked, his Stand grabbing the phone from his fingers as he spoke. "You've already _acted_ , by your own rules! So it's _my turn_ , and I'm calling in a _favor_!"

"Do YOUR WORST!" she screamed, bringing forth a _wall_ of spears, reaching from the ground to above her head, in preparation for what she intended to be her final blow to _end_ this asshole!

"Alright, then here goes! This'll end our battle for sure!"

With that, Synchronicity glanced at a nearby billboard, keyed in the number it displayed in blinking neon lights, and held the phone to its master's ear.

"Hello, MTT Pizzeria, open 24/7 a week, what's your order?" the voice on the other end of the line inquired, the phone intentionally set to speaker.

"ARE YOU _KIDDING ME_?!"

"Yeah, I'd like to place an order for delivery," JoJo continued, ignoring Undyne's ear-shatteringly loud objections. "One large pizza, hand-tossed crust, half pepperoni and half…hang on a sec." Synchronicity briefly lowered the phone and pointed to Undyne. "Any requests for your topping?"

Undyne had no response, save for the small amount of foam now trickling from her mouth in heart-stopping _hatred_.

"Right, fish eat other fish, so…other half anchovies," Synchronicity continued, bringing the phone back to Joseph's ear. "Also an order of breatsticks, a large soda, and some of those chocolate lava cakes for dessert."

"Cash or credit?"

"Hm…cash," Joseph decided, figuring that his debit card probably was only good above-ground, and had almost run out of what hotel at the edge of town—the one between the power plant and the ladder to the Waterfall grate?"

"Alright, sir, that'll be about [30 minutes], or your pizza's free."

"Alright, I'll hold you to that." With that, Joseph hung up, dismissed his Stand, and sat down. "Now, you wouldn't attack me before our dinner gets here, _would you_?'

Undyne's current anger now reached beyond what the English language could now hope to describe. She slowly wiped the foam from her mouth, folded her arms, and _glared_ at the human across her. " _Your_. Dinner."

"Your loss." Joseph shrugged, pulled out the (amazingly still dry) final, unread issue of his comic book collection, cracked it open, and began reading, taking care to keep his Stand's eye on the furious fish across him.

* * *

"Sheesh, how much longer is it gonna _be?_ " Joseph asked, closing his book and leaning back against the power plant's fence. It wasn't the most comfortable position to sit and wait in, given that his feet were still glued to the floor from Undyne's spell, but he made do with what he could.

He looked to Undyne for a response, but she said nothing. Her cerulean blue scales had turned bloodred from the rage pumping through her veins. Behind her, every molecule of air surrounding her had been displaced by a gargantuan, floating wall of spears, serrated and specifically modeled with barbed tips to cause maximum _pain_ once her turn came around. JoJo could no longer see any of the buildings they had left behind in their wild chase: all that had ever been, was, or will be had become an unlimited amount of javelins and sharp objects.

The fact that it was only her own nebulous "honor" which kept her from just ending the battle here and there was not lost on either of the combatants.

"Sure is taking the pizza guy a while to get here, huh?" JoJo glanced at his phone, sighing as he noticed it had been at least 45 minutes since he had ordered the pizza. "I mean, it's still _my turn_ , and neither of us are going anywhere with your little parlor trick here. So…guess we'll be waiting _even longer_!"

Undyne made a sound comparable to the one a mother bear might make if one were to murder all of her cubs in front of her face. More foam trailed out of her mouth, and the spears behind her rippled as her burning spirit disrupted the very atmosphere around them.

"Sorry I'm late!"

The canal's water splashed against the concrete streetwalk, as the pizza deliveryman emerged from the drink and slammed Joseph's order onto the ground.

"Wow, really took your time getting here, didn't you?" The human reached to grab a handful of the gold coins he'd amassed via tips won in battle (what was _up_ with that, anyways?), then paused. "Wait a second. It's been more than 30 minutes, hasn't it?!"

"It…has?" The fishlike monster fidgeted in place, scratching the back of its head with a tentacle. "Aw crap, Mettaton doesn't like it when people get his products for free…"

"It happens," Joseph reassured him, shrugging, as he gave the poor monster a sizable tip anyways. "Undyne, you wanna pitch in for this guy?"

Slowly, ever so slowly, Undyne turned her head to glare at the other monster. To use the old adage, if looks could kill…forget the deliveryman, Undyne's rage could kill _everyone on this street_ , from the rapidly shrinking crowd tiring of this boring excuse for a fight to the people riding the boats on the other side of the road!

"Eeeeep!" Scared away by Undyne's intense look, the deliveryman retreated with his tip.

"Ooooo~kaaaaay, time to eat!" JoJo trilled, cracking open the pizza box and taking a bite out of the first slice.

"Hope you don't mind if I have at take some more time to finish up," he commented through a mouthful of cheese, sauce, and imitation pork. JoJo kicked the rest of the box over to Undyne, where it bumped against Undyne's well-worn boots. Popping open from the force of the impact, a slice of pizza left from inside the box, flying upwards, and smacking right against Undyne's face.

Even with all the (arguably self-inflicted) humiliation of this fight weighing on her, Undyne still found the strength deep within her to squawk as food ran down her face yet again, her eyepatch only barely keeping hot cheese out of her empty eyesocket.

Were one to see inside her actual skull, a casual observer would recognize that sound of distress to be her actual _last nerve_ snapping, alongside some actual brain cells in her head.

"After all, I can't fight on a full stomach!" Joseph continued, not noticing how Undyne had finally hit the point where the dam of her rage was about to break. "I'll need about 15 minutes to finish eating, and then about an hour to digest the food! _Then_ , I might need to go find a water fountain to wash all the grease off my hands..." continued the human as he lifted his hand up to demonstrate, "and after _that_ —"

JoJo found it difficult to continue with that thought, being quickly distracted from the crippling pain of a spear having shot clean through his hand, leaving a bloody hole behind.

"I! HAVE HAD! _ENOUGH_!" Undyne bellowed, the wall of spears behind her finals shooting forwards into motion. "BAD ENOUGH YOU WON'T JUST _DIE_ , BUT YOU'RE DOING EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO _PISS! ME! OOOOOOOFF!_ "

Gasping in pain, JoJo quickly grabbed the breadsticks with his working hand, and crammed one onto his mouth as Synchronicity appeared to bring forth a blur of thorns and vines. As his hand wound slowly but surely healed, Synchronicity deflected the first volley of strikes with loud echoes of "ARORORORORA!"

But that round was but the first of many to come. The second wall of spears behind the first one shot into action, piercing through Synchronicity's vines and slamming the Stand repeatedly in the torso and sides.

Carrying over to its user, the momentum of the blows sent JoJo sprawling across the ground, already bleeding in too many places all over his body.

"YOU WON'T FOLLOW ANY OF THE RULES!" Undyne asked, her voice almost as piercing as her weapons. She walked forward, her personal spear raised high above her head to deliver a finishing blow. "THEN _NEITHER WILL I_! TIME TO _PAY_ , HUMAN!"

As his vision unfocused and blurred for a moment from the pain, Joseph noticed that his skin had finally faded back to its regular color! Undyne had finally been driven so blind with rage that she'd forgotten to keep concentrating on her curse! _Now_ was his chance!

"Gotta…catch me first!" he quipped, pushing past the pain to roll away from the strike (and all over his wounds, as he painfully discovered), and ducked underneath the hole the spears had made in the fence to struggle into the plant proper.

"QUIT RUNNING AWAY!" Undyne demanded, breaking into a run to follow the human in.

Once Undyne had entered the building, she started coughing. Apparently, the workers here hadn't quite finished dealing with the heat buildup caused from combining hydro-powered generators to the prime Underground CORE plant's trickle charges to power the entire town. This whole place was like a sauna!

She may not be cold-blooded _per say_ , but the heat was going to take a toll on her. As if her _asshole_ of an enemy hadn't worn her _SOUL_ out enough!

"You…can't _escape_ me!" she said, coughing a few times in between words. She whipped her head around the room, looking for JoJo to no avail. "This is the _end_ of the line for you! I _will_ beat you!"

"I'm afraid not," Joseph said, crawling out from behind a burning-hot pylon and supporting himself on his hands. "That's not what comes next! Instead…"

Ignoring the pain, JoJo planted his foot down on a water pipe, and rested his hand on the uncomfortably-warm pylon beside him. "Instead, you'll say 'your cheap tricks won't beat the hero of this world!' _Watch_!"

"Your cheap tricks won't beat the hero of this world!" Undyne said, finally catching Joseph's moment in the corner of her eye, and turning around to stab at him.

But as she whirled around in place, JoJo swiftly kicked downwards on the water pipe, pricking Synchronicity's thorned hand against the heated pylon as he struck!

The effect was immediate. Heated to the same temperature of the generator, the water turned to superheated steam, blasting Undyne in the face with boiling hot vapor!"

"W…WAAAAURGH!" Undyne stepped backwards from the blow, only to stumble and trip across another set of pipes. Flicking his wrist, Joseph constricted the vines he had wrapped around the entire set, breaking them all and engulfing Undyne in hot steam!

"I grew up in the city, so I'm used to being hot from all the body heat!" Joseph bragged, as Undyne fell to her knees, her scales smoking from the burns. "But you're a fish, and you must not be _used_ to the heat!"

"N…no," the captain of the Royal Guard moaned. Slowly, she tried to prop herself up with her spear, but slipped. The weapon slipped from her grasp, and both spear and wielder slammed into the floor. "I…can't…give up…"

"Determination only gets you so far," Joseph said. He flopped against the ground across from her, panting in exertion. "It's all in how you fight a battle. Brute force won't win you fights, especially against _me_. You've lost!"

Undyne finally fell silent, as she slipped into unconsciousness, in a haze of defeat and disappointment.

* * *

Slowly, her eye creaked open.

Then, she shot to attention, scrambling to get to her feet and conjuring a spear out of reflex.

"You won't get away!" she yelled. But something, deep down, told her than her quarry had already gotten away. Far, far away.

She had been beaten. And with how sneaky that human was, by the time she had hunted him down again, he might have put enough plots into play that winning would be…taxing.

Undyne sighed, clenching her free hand into a fist. Then, she slammed it against the wall, breaking it into a thousand pieces.

At the very least, it looked like the damage they'd done to the plant had been repaired already. The steam had been taken care of.

Wait…how _had_ she gotten out of there? Being exposed to heat like that should've made her _heavily_ injured, if not outright dead!

Had…had _the human_ saved her?!

She looked down at the pylon near the wall. In its cleaned, now-polished surface, she could see a note stuck under her eyepatch. Slowly, she snatched it up, unfolded it, and read.

She read it.

And then she saw the graffiti JoJo had left on her face with the same marker he'd written that farewell note in.

And from all the way across town, as he left the Italian restaurant with his earlier tab paid, Joseph could hear Undyne's scream of frustration and humiliation.

-TO BE CONTINUED


	5. Ch 5:Cooking Catastrophe,&The Messenger!

The house was still, at peace at long last.

Sans was sprawled out on the living room couch, sleeping and snoring loud enough to nearly break the windows… _again_. His socks and shoes lay strewn all across the floor, as always. If he was dreaming of anything, he gave no sign of it, as he laid perfectly still and did nothing aside from snoring.

"Saaaaans!"

Much to the annoyance of his brother, who had just slammed their front door open and hopped inside the house.

"It's 7:00 in the morning, and you're _still_ asleep?!" Papyrus demanded, closing the door and carefully placing his water bottle and headphones on the coffee table.

"i _was_ asleep," Sans muttered one eye flaring to life with a pale white shine, "until you came in. you know that waking up before, like, 11:00 is supposed to mess with your circadian rhythm, right? and give you a bad day in general?"

"Excuses, excuses!" his brother huffed, doffing his exercise jacket and striding over to the kitchen. Before he cooked their morning breakfast, Papyrus wiped the sweat off of his skull with the towelette hanging off of the oven's handle. He took care not to go near the cracks stemming up from his right eye and down from his left—those scars from his duel with JoJo were still tender. They looked _awesome_ , though! He remembered seeing this look somewhere else, and it looked _amazing_ on him!"

"I only woke up an _hour_ ago," he continued, firing up the stove's burner and grabbing one of many pots meticulously lines in the dishwasher with his Stand, "and I've already accomplished so much today! I went for a jog, I walked the Dogs on their new daily patrol, and I even squeezed in some time to practice using my 『Stand!』And what did _you_ do?!"

"Dreamed, mostly," Sans replied, idly pulling his cell phone out of his sweatshirt pocket and glancing at the wall of text alerts onscreen. "wow, neat. Did you know Undyne fought the human yesterday?"

Papyrus paused in the midst of cracking open a box of spaghetti. "She did?" He turned off the burner, and looked over at his brother. "Why hasn't she called yet? Usually she calls me _dozens_ of times whenever she wins a fight!"

"simple." Sans scrolled down his phone, and glanced further on the newsreel, sighing as the news reported the same boring ups and downs as always. "she lost."

"Oh!" Papyrus quickly grabbed his own phone, and keyed in Undyne's number. "I don't ever remember that happening before! I need to ask her _everything_!"

"Mmhm." Sans felt his own phone vibrate, the caller I.D. listing as "JoJo."

"hey," Sans said, greeting the human on the other end of the line. "heard you had a good time in sewer. Your trip alright?"

"You're _shitting me_ , right?!" demanded JoJo. Though he was loud, it wasn't that noise which made both skeletons flinch: it was Undyne screaming at the top of her lungs on the other line that got them. Even though she wasn't on speaker-in fact, that was the lowest volume setting.

"I take it that you two didn't hit it off well?" Papyrus asked, moving to head to the stove, realizing his cooking lesson was soon anyways. May as well get some practice in before his studies in culinary masterpieces like the "instant ramen" continued!

Undyne's answer was garbled and haphazard, as one would expect from around a dozen different thoughts and insults forcing her way out of her mouth all at once. Papyrus _could_ make out the fact that she was generally upset with JoJo, though.

"tough fight, huh?" Sans asked, reclining further on the couch in a position which would be rather indecent if he weren't a skeleton. "well, it gets worse from here. The king makes her a jobber by comparison, and don't forget about flowey. He's got to be up to something."

"You…didn't become friends?" Papyrus pouted as he continued speaking to the capain of the Royal Guard. "But I was going to invite you _and_ him over to celebrate my great strides in being awesome! What else would be a better indicator that I'm ready to join—"

Whatever he was about to say next died in his mouth as his smartphone grew unbearably hot to the touch. Pulling it away from his earhole, he could still hear Undyne ranting on and on, with language so colorful that Papyrus learned more about reproduction in those few seconds than he had even known in his whole life!

"you want me to help out?" Sans asked. "welp…I'll do what I can, but since my stand stopped working right, and since I'm also pretty sure I'm the weakest monster here, I can't do much." Ignoring Papyrus's shouting as his phone caught fire from Undyne's inflammatory words, Sans tried to summon his Stand, only to receive the impression of a sneer and mocking laughter from the power of his SOUL incarnate. No luck, as always. "don't worry: i'm sure you can take care of yourself."

"Are you _sure_?" Papyrus asked, as he sprayed down the entire kitchen with a well-worn fire extinguisher. "Undyne won't stop until JoJo is _dead_ , no matter what! There's only one way to stop my two best friends from fighting!"

"do tell," Sans asked, hanging up on JoJo and resting his chin on his hand.

Papyrus grinned, pointed skywards, and gestured dramatically towards the charred remnants of his smartphone. "I, _the great Papyrus_ , have a brilliant plan to mend this broken relationship! Just _watch_ : when I'm through, they'll be as inseparable as…as…something fused together!"

He began to walk out the door, then paused. "Er…Sans, when does the riverperson usually come by with their boat? And…can I borrow your phone?"

* * *

 **Monster Oddyssey**

 **Chapter 5**

 **In which Papyrus Holds up a Happy Household at Bonepoint, Undyne Lights the Sky (and This Guy) On Fire, and JoJo Observes Astrological Phenomena**

* * *

Yawning, Joseph stretched his arms wide as he exited the hotel, still feeling sore after that huge fight the previous day.

How long _had_ it been since he had fallen down here, anyways? JoJo thought to himself, absentmindedly manifesting and twirling a vine around his finger as he walked, and tried to get his calendar straight.

He fell down on a Friday—he remembered that much, though the few hours _before_ he had fallen and _why_ he ended up at Mount Ebott were hazy. He didn't _think_ he had brain damage, so the fall had probably stopped his short term memory of that from sticking or something.

Then about a full day with Toriel—after he finally managed to get past her fire and weird Darth Vader powers—and after that another day in Snowdin. So already he'd burned through the whole weekend. Granny Lucy already didn't like him being gone for too long, especially with how hectic stuff was at home, but today was…Wednesday, he thought…

JoJo felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. As he withdrew the device to answer, he noticed a patrol of some guards on the opposite side of the street. By the time he had seen them, they'd noticed him too, and he didn't have time to bring out his Stand.

Not that it would be too tough to deal with this.

"What was all that noise on Sans's end of the phone?" JoJo asked, as he kicked a loose end of pipe in the air with Synchronicity's foot. He hurled it into the water with all of his might, and the canine guards promptly stopped ominously approaching him and made ominously approaching the stick their new goal.

"Oh, just a minor cooking accident!" Papyrus said. Joseph could hear the sound of running water in the background, alongside regular splashes—was Papyrus riding some kind of boat? "On that note, I'm on my way to a cooking lesson right now?"

"Really?" Joseph bit hit tongue to keep down an instinctive remark on how Papyrus dearly _needed_ those. "You mean the magic food you monsters use?"

"That's right!" Papyrus said cheerfully. "Considering how you're in danger pretty much every step of the way on your way to the Barrier…would you like to join in?"

"Uh…" Joseph looked down at the canal, where he saw that the guards had totally forgotten about him and were now fighting over the pipe, splashing and shoving one another over who would fetch it next.

On one hand, it would be _really_ helpful to maybe get some insight into how to make what basically amounted to healing potions whenever he wanted.

On the other hand, he had no clue whatsoever how to use magic—Sans had already explained that Stands technically didn't count as magic anyways. And it sounded like a whole lot of _work_ , and he was not a fan of work.

"I think I'll just watch," he decided. That was the best of both worlds, really—gleaning some insight into the process without expending any actual effort himself. Win-win!

"Excellent!" Papyrus began rattling off a set of directions to the human, explaining that his teacher's house was only a few minutes worth of walking away from the grate from Sewer to Waterfall—no guard outposts, old or new, were in the way to boot. And, best of all, he was within a few steps of the next grate himself!

Before Joseph could start climbing the ladder, he heard a loud clatter of ceramic against concrete, followed by loud panting. He turned around to see the entire pack of Guard dogs waiting behind him. Two legged, four legged, small, big…all of them had been distracted by his gambit. Perhaps too _well_.

"I'll be there in…a bit." Joseph hung up, then flinched as one of the Royal Guards licked him and presented the pipe to him in an outstretched paw. This may take a while.

* * *

"NYEHENYEHENYEHE!"

Thriller stepped back, and Papyrus leaned around his Stand and observed the training Dummy floating in the air. While it was too bad its inhabitant was missing, and thus he couldn't try getting feedback on his technique or craft any new gravity-based puzzles, his new ability _worked_. Very well, to boot—he didn't feel any strain from causing that weight to slip through gravity's firm fingers at all!

He tapped his hand against the Dummy, cancelling the momentum from Thriller's punches and forcing it to a midair standstill.

Then, he heard splashing behind him, and a heavy sigh.

"You took your time getting here, JoJo!"

Papyrus turned around, not registering the fact that Joseph was soaked from head to toe with fluids. Had he fallen into the canal? He would have to help him train with balance after the cooking! Friends had a responsibility to help friends, after all!

"I'm not going to talk about it, so let's skip to this," He muttered, gesturing to the house.

He blinked, taking into account that it was shaped very much like a fish's head. The owner must have a _huge_ ego.

Grinning, Papyrus stepped in front of JoJo, raising his hand to knock. He paused, removed a tiny, mundane bone from his pocket, and clasped it into Joseph's hand. "Be sure to give her this! She _loves_ them!"

With that, Papyrus ignored the human's shrug of indifference and knocked at the door.

Joseph heard someone groan on the other side.

"Nnnnh…Hi, Papyrus." The house's occupant stepped forward. Papyrus was obstructing a clear view of the mysterious chef, but she sounded oddly familiar…

"Sorry, I had a rough night," she apologized. "I screwed up big time on the job, and I've been lifting nonstop to make _sure_ it doesn't happen again!"

Wait…

"Oh, don't worry about that!" Papyrus said, still smiling obliviously as to what was probably coming next. "We can talk about that later! We've got my cooking lesson now, right? I even brought a friend?"

"Oh?" The other figure perked up, but Joseph's growing sense of forboding only spiked ever higher. "That's _great_! I've always _told_ you that you gotta make more friends to get stronger, and here we are!"

"But of course! I brought someone who I wholeheartedly believe you'll love to meet!" Papyrus stepped out of the way, and Joseph's eyes widened in horror.

"Hi," Undyne said, smiling as she leaned against the doorframe. "I don't think we've…met…"

She trailed off as she recognized just whom Papyrus had brought here, and the pieces of this whole meeting lined up in her brain.

Joseph stepped back, already to re-use his family's famous technique, but he felt a hand grab onto his shoulder. He didn't need to look to see that Thriller's sequin-clad hand had seized hold of him, and was already pushing him through the door.

Undyne said nothing. No greeting, half-hearted, forced through gritted teeth, or otherwise.

"Well, let's get cooking!" With that, Papyrus gently shoved both JoJo and Undyne into the house.

* * *

The house was perfectly alright on the inside (nicer than what JoJo was used to), but he wasn't paying attention to that. Already, he was analyzing the place for a potential escape route. That window on the left looked like a good choice—it was overlooking the river trailing to Sewer, but he was already sopping wet anyways…

"So!" Eagerly, Papyrus clapped his hands, ignoring Joseph's mounting panic and Undyne's teeth grinding themselves loud enough to hear for miles away. "Why don't we get started?"

"Yeah." Undyne's face twisted into a humorless, mad grin as she pulled a spear into reality and pointed it right at JoJo's throat. "Why don't we _get started?!_ "

But a microsecond before her strike could pierce his soft, vunerable flesh, Thriller yanked the spear away.

"That's no way to greet a guest! I thought you knew the 『rules of hospitality』 better!" Papyrus chided, attempting to make a _tsk tsk_ of scolding, but failing without the tongue required for the gesture.

"Oh, I forgot!" Papyrus exclaimed, smacking his forehead. "I have to…go to the bathroom! You two enjoy yourselves alone—I'll be _right back!_ "

With that, Papyrus left out of the window, leaving the house's remaining occupants in the tensest situation either of them had encountered since…yesterday.

* * *

The moment Papyrus hit the ground, it also hit him that he _may_ have made an error as to how to really go about doing this.

"ARORA!"

"NGAAAAAH!

Yes, he _definitely_ should've gone about this better.

If they were already starting to fight, he didn't have time to gently prod them into making friends! He had to _act fast_!

* * *

Joseph quickly rolled under Undyne's kitchen table, but he wasn't quick _enough_. Though he dodged the spears themselves, he felt one pin his scarf against the ground, making the garment dig painfully into his neck and locking him in place. He'd already used Synchronicity to give his flesh the consistency of the bone Papyus had given him, but that would only protect him against so many strikes—less than he could reliably dodge.

But before Undyne could follow up with another attack, both of them, felt the entire ground shake with a powerful blow.

Followed by the _entire house_ rocketing upwards, bumping lightly into the Underground's wall, and coming to a stop in midair.

"You know, it'll be hard to have this cooking lesson if you're both trying to kill each other!" Papyrus floated up to the window, using the same ability he'd used on Undyne's house to levitate himself to their new level.

"I've trapped the house in Thriller's anti-gravity field!" Papyrus announced, rotating to the side a little to get a better look at both of them. "And I won't let you down until the two of you sit down and _talk!_ I'm sure both of you are up to the challenge of spending two minutes at least _trying_ to be civil! Who knows! Maybe you two could even accomplish the impossible task of coming out of this as _friends_!"

"Oh, come on!" JoJo yelled from underneath the table. "Do you _seriously_ think that's gonna get this _maniac to_ —"

Undyne drew in breath sharply, trying to calm her boiling blood. The air shimmered around her, and the room's temperature dropped by several degrees. "You think I can't _pull this off_ , Papyrus? Guess what? Just because _this human_ 's an assho-jerk, doesn't mean I can't pull that off! Just watch!"

"… _what_?!"

Papyrus grinned in triumph. "Please do! Let's see if the 『friendship』 you've told me is so strong can overcome whatever you two got up to in 『Sewer』"

With that, Papyrus dropped back to the ground.

Joseph felt cold sweat begin to form on the back of his neck. Partly from the sheer amount of tonal whiplash he was going through, and partly because Undyne's cold determination wasn't just charging the emotional atmosphere in the room.

It was also causing the actual house to change. Fully manifesting as Undyne knocked the table on its side with one hand, an armored giant somehow wearing a sailor fuku over plate mail appeared. The frost crusted over the room began to melt, as the ability of what Joseph quickly realized as Undyne's 『Stand』 faded as Undyne calmed herself down.

Though Undyne's blood pressure rose again when she turned around and noticed that _someone else_ -a stranger wearing _her destroyed armor?!_ —had broken in.

Out of reflex, she punched the figure in the ribs.

She promptly doubled back, wheezing as her own blow was reflected into her, and fell on her ass as her Stand vanished.

This would be a _long_ day.

* * *

"So, _that's_ what this is, huh?!" Undyne said, getting to her feet and flipping the table onto its side with a single finger, exposing JoJo to her attacks. She'd dropped her spear in her prior tumble, but she certainly hadn't ceased all hostilities just because Papyrus asked her to.

Although the fact that JoJo wasn't bleeding out from _all_ the stab wounds was a promising start to this little disaster of an encounter.

"You weren't just satisfied with duping _one_ monster into betraying our people and helping you escape justice. No, you brought in _another_ one, gave them my _damn armor_ , to keep on rubbing your victory in and—"

"Ah…hahahahaha…"

Undyne stopped, then leaned down and grabbed JoJo by the collar, dragging him to his feet and glaring right into his soul.

"Guess you still don't get it, huh?" Joseph said, before Undyne could get a word in. "Then again, Sans did say Stands aren't common knowledge…and if anyone down here was stubborn enough to get one of those without needing me to bail them out, it'd be _you_."

"A 'Stand?'" Undyne echoed, dropping JoJo and narrowing her eye in confusion. "You were fighting me with furniture all that time?"

"Tell you what." Joseph backed away from Undyne and hopped onto the guest chair beside the overturned table, crossing his legs and resting his chin on his closed fist. "You stop trying to kill me for now, and I'll tell you what's up with Captain Weeaboo over there."

"Why should I believe anything you say?!" Undyne snarled, flipping the table back over and sitting down on the other chair. "I hate you. You hate me. Why should I buy whatever you say? Why are you _even here?!_ "

"The only reason I'm here is 'cause Papyrus asked me to come." JoJo sighed. "I mean, I _thought_ I was going to meet whatever hilariously incompetent chef taught him how to mangle…"

Joseph noticed that the atmosphere of the room was rapidly rising in heat. He realized that now might be a good time to change subjects, but…

Joseph saw Undyne's Stand materialize behind her. As her whole body shook in rage (again), the room heated up. Compared to how everything started getting colder when she was trying to calm herself down…was this her 『Stand Ability?』

Flicking his wrist, Joseph whipped a vine from Synchronicity, lashing it around the new Stand's forearm. He pulled forward, and Undyne grunted in discomfort and surprise as her own hand followed.

"See? Not some other monster." JoJo released his hold and sighed. "Okay, I've _finally_ got your attention. Now, let's get this out of the way…"

* * *

"Me. It's _me_. My SOUL."

"Yeah, that's about it," Joseph confirmed, sipping the mediocre tea Undyne had brewed for both of them (after checking it for poison, naturally). "That's the basics of a 『Stand』, or at least what Sans told me."

"He really _had_ been doing some weird stuff back in the day, huh?" Undyne glanced back behind her, where she saw her Stand's head just _floating_ there, and turned back to her (reluctant) houseguest. "I… _think_ he was the Royal Scientist back before Alphys, so if anyone'd know the truth about these…"

"Him and the human SOULs." Joseph noted Undyne's surprise, then continued. "One of them-Daves, the orange one-ambushed me out of the blue. I've only seen a few so far—my 『Synchronicity』, Papyrus's 『Thriller』, whatever _yours_ is, and Toriel's 『Nirvana』, but his was different some—"

"Toriel?" Undyne asked. She leaned forward, looking JoJo in the eye. "I know all the other…Stand users…you mentioned, but who's that?"

Joseph looked back at her, carefully considering just what he should be telling Undyne about, since the peace between them was flimsy _at best_.

"When I first fell down here," he explained, "I met this big, goat-ish monster named Toriel. Nice lady, kind of overprotective, looked sort of like the King who's trying to get me killed. _Your_ boss?"

"Never mind that…She looked like Asgore?" Undyne said, tilting her head in curiosity. " Maybe they're related…Anyways, if she had one of these Stands, I wanna hear the details."

Joseph slowly nodded, quickly running through the events of that battle and considering how he should phrase things in order to try and appeal to his audience. "I'd…really rather not. We…didn't part on the best terms, and it actually _was_ a really tough fight. I mean, in two minutes, she almost chocked me to death, burned me alive, and guilt tripped me! And she just kept using her Stand to counter everything I threw at her. Only reason I got outta there is because I counter guilt tripped her by using a _lot_ of personal details about _my_ home life (which I _won't_ tell you, thank you very much), and that I just never quit pushing past to that door even with how _nigh-invincible_ she was."

"So…you talked your way out of that?" Undyne rolled her eye.

"Look…the way you went into our fight back there?" JoJo said, shifting the topic a little. "Going in all guns blazing, hit each other until you fall down? That works with magic and on the street just fine. Except against me. But," he continued, "there is _no way_ you can brute force your way past Stands. If you can't work out how to get past an enemy Stand's ability, you're _dead_. Bring yours out again?"

Unexpectedly, Undyne smirked at that. "I just gotta _will_ it to show up, right? It's time for Papyrus's cooking lesson right now, so the two—no, the _four_ of us—will do all that now!" As her Stand appeared, the air shimmered, and the world around her looked distorted, as if viewed by a funhouse mirror. But as her unease faded away, and was replaced by her usual hot-blooded mindset, the atmosphere returned to normal, and the stove across from them spontaneously sprung into life and heat.

"Wait, what?! No!"

"Consider this the _start_ of the friendship Papyrus wants us to kindle!" Undyne shouted, grabbing JoJo by the neck and hauling him over to the kitchen. "Show me what you and your 『Stand』 can do!"

"OOOOH NOOOOOOOO!"

* * *

"First," Undyne declared, dropping JoJo to the floor and ignoring how the unground house shook from the impact, "we start with the sauce!"

Coughing, JoJo stood up, but wavered in place, the lack of a solid center of gravity wreaking hell on his balance. He managed to grab hold of a drawer's handle with his hand, letting him stand, but yanking it open in the process. He briefly stared as a small white dog emerged from the cupboard packed full of bones, licked his face affectionately, and jumped away, bounding into the air.

"Envision these vegetables as your _greatest enemy!_ " Undyne continued, slamming the wall with an open palm and knocking some produce off of her shelf.

"Not too hard," Joseph said, smirking. "My greatest enemy _is_ a vegetable, anyways!"

Undyne rolled her eyes. "So you're a picky eater?! Too bad: you'll eat 'em and you'll like it!"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it." Shrugging, Joseph summoned Synchronicity, and dramatically pointed at the tomatoes. "This'll be some _good practice_!"

"ARORORORORORORORORA!" With one attack rush, the vegetables exploded, showering the walls and stovetop with artificially-made food.

"Uh…" JoJo paused. "We…forgot a bowl?"

"Screw it! We'll scrape it up and toss it all in later!"

Undyne grabbed JoJo by the arm and dragged him further down the kitchen. He slipped along some of the tomato paste splattered all over the floor, sending him sprawling and into a painful bump with the cabinets.

Neither of them noticed the light of the fridge Undyne had left open while making tea go out. Or the shower of sparks from within.

* * *

"And now we _put the noodles in_!" Undyne snatched a box of spaghetti from another cupboard, ignored how the stiff pasta broke into thousands of tiny pieces in her grip, and thrust it into JoJo's hands. "I like _home-made noodles_ the best! But these _store brand ones are cheaper!_ "

Joseph cracked open the box, rolling his eyes upon seeing the ruined pasta within. "Yeah, I can relate." He dumped the pasta into the pot…then, before Undyne could move them on to the burner, he stuck his hand in the lukewarm water and stirred the water with a thorn!

An odd noise echoed throughout the small flat—a decent comparison would be to the sound of someone cracking their knuckles, played in reverse—and the pan flashed with eldritch light.

"Yeah! Yeah!" Undyne cheered, pumping her fist in the excitement of this mundane, everyday activity. "You show those noodles who's boss!"

She reached out to grab Joseph by the shoulder and move him to the burner, but a sharp poke to the arm interrupted her. Grunting, she drew back, and saw exactly _what_ JoJo had done.

The pile of broken noodles was gone—in its place was a single, impossibly long noodle, sticking out of the bottom of the pot and reaching all of the way across the house, right to the front door.

"I synchronized the ends of the noodles to each other," JoJo explained, as Undyne picked up the noodle and stared at it. "You ever been to one of those Japanese places? I only ever got to go once, and the food wasn't anything to write home about, but those chefs did these awesome tricks with all the food!"

"Well, if it _gets your blood pumping_ , I'm down with it!" said Undyne, She broke a piece of the long noodle into a more manageable strand.

But she clearly didn't expect the whole noodle to come apart, breaking back into the exact same pieces her rash handling of the box had created in the first place

"Yeah, that's a downside of 『Synchronicity's』power," JoJo admitted, as Undyne stared in confusion at the pile of snapped pasta in her palm. "If the core object gets destroyed, there's nothing to synch the other stuff _to_ , so my ability wears off. No problem—I'll just find a way around that in the future!"

"Your Stand's just _slowing us down_!" Undyne snapped her finger, and spears erupted out of thin air and began impaling her own floor.

" _Oh God_!" The startled human sidestepped repeatedly to avoid the projectiles, as the spears sent the spilled spaghetti sailing skyward, and Undyne twisted around in the air to catch each and every noodle in the pot.

 _She's insane!_ , Joseph complained internally, as he rode one of the gravity-free shockwaves into the air and landed safely on the countertop, avoiding the rest of Undyne's spears. _She's…she's wrecking her own house just to cook dinner!_

"Now for _the stove_!" Undyne declared, slamming down the pot onto the burner. As she said this, her Stand appeared in a dazzling lightshow of color and magic, and the stove accordingly began to spark into pre-heating.

"Uh…" Joseph said, trying to get Undyne's attention by waving. He looked down through the holes in the floor, at Papyrus's conspicuous absence.

And at the ominous shimmer in the air steadily rising towards them.

"The hotter the food is, the better!" shouted Undyne, undaunted, as she turned the dial further and further to the right. She frowned—nothing seemed to be happening. Had Papyrus severed the gas pipelines or something when he lifted her house?

"Undyne, there's—"

"Quiet!" she snapped in irritation, whirling around to look at JoJo. "You already got out of _our fight_ , so you're not getting out of this lesson!"

" _Undyne, look down, damnit_!" Joseph finally demanded, pointing down.

Which was when the shimmer reached the floor of the house, and wood, rug, and all turned to dust, leaving JoJo and Undyne aloft only from Papyrus's Stand ability.

And, naturally, that was when the anti-gravity ability took the exact moment to fail, leaving both people beginning a fast, lethal descent to below.

* * *

"C…crap!"

Joseph flailed around in the air, desperately trying to grab onto something to stop his freefall, or at least to synch his mass to and slow his fall.

But, just as his luck was wont to turn, he couldn't find anything that would help! As he and Undyne careened downwards, he didn't see a single falling object or plank of wood which he could use to slow his descent! Whether it was out of Undyne's hard, strong nature, or just fate leaving him in the dust yet again, he was out of luck!

And, with the cavern walls smoothened by millennia of wind blown from the river and water fluctuations, there was nothing to just grab onto!

Joseph quickly went for his pack to grab a comic book, but they were just seconds away from the ground! They didn't have time!

"D…damnit!" Undyne screeched, once her brain fully caught up with what was going on. "I am not dying from some _freak accident!_ "

Floating behind her, her Stand pulled one of her spears from nowhere, and hurled it at the ground.

Immediately, Joseph's face was hit by a burst of hot, humid air, and their descent began to slow.

"If I gotta die, it'll be from some big _heroic sacrifice_!" Undyne continued, too busy ranting to notice that their freefall was quickly slowing to a less dramatic speed. "I'd use the last of my strength to save the world and all my friends from the last boss by beating them!"

"Uh, Undyne…"

"Or pass on my magical power to my star pupil so they can defeat the evil overlord in my stead! Or—"

"Hey, hey! We're not dying now!"

"—or I'd…huh?"

Undyne snapped out of her quasi-trance of heroic righteousness to notice that their fall had finally slowed to that of a feather. Or something similarly slow, like an internet browser's loading time, or the painstakingly slow line at government offices.

In any case, they hit the ground feetfirst, legs jarred from the impact but otherwise totally unharmed. Whoever had caused this collapse or assault—doubtlessly one of the human SOULs, both Stand users realized—was nowhere to be seen.

"HA!" Undyne belted after a moment of pause, pumping her fist in triumph. "I ain't going down _that_ easily!"

Joseph took time to catch his breath, inhaling deeply to steady himself. "I appreciate the save…but what exactly did you _do_?"

Undyne drew back her hand to dramatically monologue about how she had saved the day, but she stopped mid-pose, face scrunched up in bemusement. "You really _are_ ignorant of how stuff works, huh?

"See, the hero—that's _me_ , by the way—can change the world around them through their will," she said, quickly yanking Joseph and pulling the two away from the falling debris of the rapidly-shattering house. "I just called upon my spirit of 『burning justice』 to do that by heating up the air underneath us!"

"…You figured out how to do that so quickly?" JoJo asked in disbelief. He knew about thermals-pockets of hot air less dense than room temperature atmosphere, which allowed birds and planes to fly easily—but she couldn't have just thrown a fireball or something to create such a strong one so quickly. To superheat the air underneath them so suddenly, to slow their fall without just blowing them up…she had to have used her 『Stand Ability!』

"Ah, _now_ I get it!" he said, snapping his fingers. "When you were giving me the could shoulder before, I thought your AC was screwing up and making your house freezing cold! But that was actually your Stand using your emotions to change the world around you! And _not_ some 'heroic spirit' or whatever you were blabbing on about before."

Undyne shrugged. "What's the difference? Point is, we're alive. But so's whoever just broke my whole house."

She breathed in sharply in panicked realization, and yanked her cell phone out of her pocket.

"Looking for Papyrus?" JoJo asked. "I'm not sure you have to worry about it. If he were dead, his clothes would be lying around here in his dust, right?"

Undyne glared at him for speaking of her friend's disappearance so casually, but her face brightened up when the call went through after just one ring.

"Hey!" she barked into the phone. "What happened? We never finished our—"

"Date?" JoJo asked mockingly, leaning over towards Undyne to hear Papyrus better.

" _Hangout_ ," she hissed insistently, glaring at him again before putting the phone back to her ear. "Where are you?"

Joseph couldn't make out Papyrus without the phone on speaker, but Undyne's surprised look at the gigantic hole in the ground between Undyne's house and her neighbor's residence told him all he needed to know.

JoJo strode over to the hole, followed shortly by Undyne. Both of them looked inside, and saw a tiny white figure miles below. It waved at them.

Glancing at one another, JoJo and Undyne sighed, then waved back.

* * *

Papyrus had said it would take _hours_ for him to float his way back to the surface-he had already collided several times with the unyielding rock walls of his hole when trying to speed his ascent. It would be slow going if he wanted to get up in one piece (so much as a collection of bones held together by nothing more than magic and a SOUL could be considered one piece).

He was only marginally more helpful about the identity of their mysterious attacker.

"You just _saw_ things breaking randomly?" Undyne repeated incredulously. "You didn't see _anyone_? No spells, no SOUL, not even a direction it was coming from?"

JoJo sighed and began wracking his mind for countermeasures against a foe like this. It may be the hardest fight he'd ever been through so far, even counting Flowey, Toriel, and Undyne, but—

"Oh, _now_ you mention you weren't even looking around," scoffed Undyne. "So, you don't know because you weren't _looking_? Keeping up your spell or something?"

Well, that made things significantly easier. And also, in other ways, harder.

"Hey. There _is_ one thing we know."

Undyne pulled her attention away from the phone, and looked to Joseph. "What?"

"Where they went."

JoJo pointed to a part of the rock walls of the Underground that was simply _gone_. As if someone had taken an erase tool in Photoshop to remove bits of the world from existence.

Well, it wasn't totally _gone_ , judging by the pile of knee-high gravel and dust on the newly-formed floor. Just destroyed.

Undyne blinked with her one eye, the multilayered eyelids covering her empty eyesocket on the other side of her face mirroring the action out of sheer muscular habit.

"How did _none of us_ notice that before?!" she asked.

JoJo only shrugged in response.

* * *

"We're _really_ just going to follow this thing without even knowing where it goes?"

"I _know_ where it goes," Undyne muttered, as she walked behind Joseph, keeping him where she could see him. They could only see from a light Undyne's Stand had provided, creating a flaming aura around her body from her conviction to light the dark tunnel. "It's going to wherever the most monsters are to kill them. I'm going to defeat it and save everyone!"

"Let's not play the pronoun game, alright?" Joseph tried to peer ahead with Synchronicity's eyes, but it was just as dark to his Stand as it was to him. "You're talking about whatever attacked us. And you think it's—"

"One of the lost SOULs? What else _could_ it be?" As they walked, Undyne could hear the sound of running water above them. Had the SOUL dug all the way _underneath_ the river? "The first one already tried to murder an entire town, so the other ones are just as evil!"

Joseph thought for a moment. Undyne had a point—if he'd escaped after being locked up for thousands of years, he'd be _pissed off_ and possibly homicidal too—but something about this didn't add up.

"I don't think killing us is what it's here for."

Undyne stopped mid-step, then resumed walking. "And how do _you_ know that?"

He rolled his eyes. "If it wanted to kill us—at least directly—it could've done it there and then while you were trying to burn your own house down. Papyrus has no idea it was there until it's put him down a hole, and it tore through all those cables and supports of your place like _nothing._

"Besides, if it were going to go and slaughter people, why's it heading _deeper_ down?"

The Captain of the Royal Guard sighed, her Stand's light flickering and sparking as the tension grew. "Why are _you_ following it? Hell, why are you following _me_?"

He was uncharacteristically silent for a second. "I'm headed this way regardless, right?" JoJo said at last. "May as well have someone to cover my ass while I'm crawLAAAAAAAAA—"

A scream and a loud _thud_ cut off the rest of his words. Undyne suppressed a snort of laughter, then looked down. The tunnel abruptly took a 90 degree shift into a solid drop, into a big pile of toys, used notebooks, and other junk.

And a lot of that junk looked _familiar_ to her.

"Gerson?!"

She leapt down, landing on her feet with her arms outstretched and amid a pile of loose clothing, produce, and body pillows.

Undyne ignored Joseph attempting to free himself from a broken hula-hoop and discarded spam mail, and bounded over to the front desk of the junk shot.

"W- _hoa_ , there!" The shopkeep emerged from underneath the countertop, closing the cash register stashed below with his foot. "Haven't seen you in a while, kiddo!"

"Same here!" Undyne said, laughing and scratching the back of her head. "You know, work and all. Still up and kicking?"

"As always!" The other monster reclined back in a sturdy wooden chair, which somehow failed to break under the weight of his shell and his heavy "explorer" gear. "So, what brings you here 'fore I even open?"

Ignoring Joseph's complaints and requests for help, Undyne briefly explained about the human SOUL's escape from imprisonment in the capital, and how she had been tracking one down to defeat it and stop its rampage.

"Well, good 'fer you!" The turtle-esque merchant exclaimed once she was done. "Glad to hear somebody's finding 'em and dealing with it! The one who barged in here was—"

"Wait, it came _here_?!" Undyne interrupted, slamming her hands down onto the desk in surprise.

"Oh, what a shock!" said Joseph melodramatically, as he finally clawed his way out of the miniature junkyard and joined Undyne at Gerson's desk. "What a surprise that it came all this way, through the tunnel _it created_ leading right from your place to _here_?! That's crazy!"

She stomped down hard on JoJo's foot, and the sharp pain from the blow convinced him to keep quiet for now.

"Yes indeed!" the shopkeep confirmed, crossing his legs and stroking his chin in thought. "She was an odd one, too! Kept goin' on and on about a 'game' and asking about a prize of some kind!"

"Prize?" Undyne and Joseph echoed in unison.

"She tried ta throw some kinda ball of lightbulbs and string at me when I told her I didn't have what she wanted! _Or_ she wouldn't be getting a discount on anything!" Gerson laughed. "Guess even she couldn't break the 『rules』 of my store, though! Said something 'bout a misstep and a wrong note and then took off!"

Undyne tilted her head in confusion. "So, a bunch of gibberish, then? Not really surprising. Where;d it go?"

Gerson simply pointed at the second tunnel now boring through one of his store's walls.

"I hate ta shoe you out, but I opened a minute ago, and I gotta fix these holes before business kicks in!"

"Got it! Thanks for the help!" Undyne tried to grab Joseph by the collar again to drag him along, but Synchronicity battered her hand aside.

"Nice try. I'm not getting dragged around again." JoJo started walking to the tunnel, then smirked and stopped. "You know, if the force doesn't work out for you, you could get a solid job in the storage industry. Or demolitions-either one for you!"

He laughed and kept going. Undyne clenched her fist in irritation.

"Friendly banter, _right_?" she muttered under her breath. "I'll get through to him. I'll make _friends_ with him so hard he'll be stuck to me like _glue_!"

After reasserting her determination to clear Papyrus's earlier dare, she dashed off.

"Kids." Gerson chuckled, and got up to begin the arduous task of fixing his store.

* * *

"Oh thank _God, light!_ "

Breaking into a run, Joseph hurried through the end of the tunnel and emerged on the other side.

He promptly slipped on the wet stones, and nearly fell into the waterfall right next to the impromptu cave's mouth, had he not grabbed onto a nearby signpost to stay upright.

"Hey, watch it!" Undyne demanded, as she made her exit and looked around. "That's part of _our history_ there!"

And naturally, that was the moment when part of their history crumbled right off the wall under JoJo's weight, leaving him holding a plaque of chickenscratch writing and a key part of local history ripped away like a cheap poster.

"Uh…I can fix this!" He blurted, before Undyne could go into another angry tirade of some kind. Summoning his Stand's vines in his fingertips, Joseph held the plaque back against its place on the wall, and spat in his free hand. The consistency of the bedrock swiftly turned to vicious liquid, and he shoved the plate into it. JoJo pulled his hand away, snapped the vine with a dramatic snap of his wrist, and the wall hardened again, with only some minor warping to show any cultural desecration had taken place.

"You couldn't just repair it?" Undyne asked, biting back the rant she had on the tip of her toungue. "Synched the wood to the wall or something?"

"I wish. It's not that broad a power." Joseph shrugged, then took a closer look at the plaque. "What's up with this, anyways?"

Undyne stepped backwards, gesturing to the rest of the wall and the long line of writing that stretched all the way back to the waterfall dozens of feet away. "It's a memorial. Some monsters fell down the top of that waterfall during the war on the surface. They drowned, so Asgore put up all this to commemorate our losses."

JoJo squinted, taking a closer look at the plaques and the dark history they painted for this world.

" 'Why did the humans attack?' " He read aloud. "Indeed, it seemed that they had nothing to fear. It would take the SOULs of…' " JoJo's eyes widened. "One human SOUL's as powerful as every monster down here?!"

"That's what they _thought_ at the time," Undyne replied, folding her arms in irritation and looking around the rest of the cavern for their quarry. "Of course, we've been _training_ since then! And we won't lose the next one!"

"You _want_ that?! War'd suck for both sides! And all this makes it even more messed up! If some of the assholes back home heard about all this, they'd use it for some big rants about how 'humans are superior, we manifest destiny to dominate, thinly-veiled racism, blah blah blah.'" Joseph shook his head, moving onto the next set of plaques. "Don't believe everything you read. I don't read much, and even _I_ know that!"

Undyne said "If you don't want to read it, then let's just get going! You can learn how much your ancestors sucked later!"

"Already know that. _Believe me_ , I know." Joseph ignored Undyne's order to move on, and skipped to another salient point of the reading. " '…Humans have one weakness. Ironically, it's the strength of their SOULs. Allows it to persist after death, monsters can absorb it…' "

He finish paraphrasing that _delightful_ factoid and turned back to Undyne. "Guess that's why the Sinister Six is still around if they've been dead for so long."

"A monster with a human SOUL can _cross_ the Barrier," Undyne recounted, choosing to skip over just _how_ she knew this. Couldn't have been from experience…right?

"But if someone got _seven_ SOULs—like I told you before—we'd be able to break it down for good!" She grinned. "And Asgore's got the energy of those six already, even with them AWOL now! All according to _plan_!"

"Really." Joseph stopped himself from scrolling onto the next plaque, and turned to look at Undyne. He was clearly _not_ happy with hearing this. As one would expect from learning they would need to die for fixing some mistake a bunch of assholes millennia back made totally unrelated to him.

But _that_ wasn't what had set him off.

"Did you guys _ever_ try to make another plan?"

Undyne's triumphant smile of getting the upper hand on the human abruptly vanished. "…What?" She asked.

"You've had _thousands_ of years to make an escape plan, and your best idea is just to _wait around_ for some poor saps to fall into your laps? You haven't tried _anything_ else?!"

"…Not important," she hissed, staring pointedly at a wall with some sort of mural painted over the stone.

"Like _hell_ it's important!" JoJo objected. "If you and every other person here wants me _dead_ , you need a _damn_ good excuse why you haven't even _tried_ to—"

"No, I mean we've got _bigger_ problems!" Undyne grabbed JoJo by the shoulder and yanked him in front of the mural.

Before Joseph could complain about Undyne using him like a human yo-yo yet again, he saw it. A gaunt, tall figure dressed in robes, with pure black eyes and a wicked smile, occupied the entirety of the wall. Presumably, this is what a monster might look like if it ate a human SOUL. It was deeply unsettling, owing to the entity falling smack dab in the middle of the uncanny valley.

But beyond that…Why did it look…

Familiar?

Sadly, before he could ponder this mystery further, he saw what Undyne was talking about. The entire wall was _rumbling_ , and shaking in place. It was as if a gigantic earthquake was occurring, but targeted only the wall and _nothing_ else.

The rumbling grew stronger and stronger, until the two of them saw something beginning to peek through the edges of the stone itself.

It looked like a sphere of crossed wires, with glowing navy lightbulbs shining throughout the entire thing.

The eye in the middle of the object blinked, through the tiny gaps through which it and the two people on the other side of the rock gazed through.

Then, the rest of the wall rumbled and _faded_ away, as if it were shaken to microscopic pieces.

"OH SHIT!"

Undyne's Stand appeared, and took aim at JoJo.

"ATATATATATATATATATA!"

Slamming him repeatedly with the flat pommel of its own spear, it shoved JoJo backwards, to a farther and safer distance than Undyne herself would be able to push.

Undyne sidestepped the emerging SOUL, hissing in irritation as the tip of her ponytail was caught in the sphere and _vanished_. The monster crouched, then leapt high into the air, sticking the landing on the rickety bridge next to JoJo.

"It's _about damn time_ you showed yourself!" Undyne announced.

Before she continued, she noticed Joseph grabbing her by the shoulder—this time, _she_ was the one being yanked away, off of the bridge and onto the other, stable side.

" _Now_ you can go. Watch where you do those ballerina twirls next time."

As Undyne prepared to fire back verbal volleys of her own and re-ignite yet another debate, she was cut off by trilling, high-pitched laughter.

"Those? Those were _not_ ballerina moves. I _know_ those. And those were _poor_ moves."

The sphere moved farther away from the cave entrance. As it began disintegrating the floor next to it, a figure steped out. Her pink tutu brushed against the cavern walls, some of the phantom dust resting between the frills spreading to the winds from the process.

On high-heel clad feet she pivoted, turning in a full circle, then coming to a rest beside her Stand, holding her tiny hand next to a particularly large lightbulb, close to the eye.

If she weren't transparent, glowing blue, and quite obviously dead and crazy, the preteen girl standing before them might've been cute, if not adorable. She pouted, and _posed_ beside her Stand.

"So you're the one My Lord wants gone?" She frowned. "You don't look like much. And you're not what I'm after anyways. But, since you're here…I may as well play with you."

"If it's a fight you want, I'll be _happy_ to oblige!" Undyne stepped forward, conjuring her own spear and standing back-to-back with her Stand at the ready. "I'm Undyne, Captain of the Royal Guard! And this is my Stand, which is called…" she hesitated for a moment, trying to think of a fitting name.

"…『The Messenger!』" She declared after a bit of thought. "Human! I'll channel the hopes and dreams of every monster you've killed, and send it right back at you for—"

"Don't care," the SOUL announced, brushing at her long hair and sending more dust flying in the wind. "That must be JoJo near you. I guess. I'm bored, and I have a 『prize』 to win for My Lord, so I'll make the intros and your losses quick.

Her face betrayed the first hint of emotion as she leaned forward, ready to twirl into battle. The small, dainty face she owned twisted into an insidious grin, and she laughed her spine-chilling giggles again.

"My name is Sia, and this is 『The Fray.』So, let's begin. 『Game Time Start!』"

\- TO BE CONTINUED

* * *

The Messenger  
User: Undyne

 **Stats:**  
Power: A  
Speed: B  
Precision: C  
Durability: B  
Range: D  
Learning: D

 **Abilities:** Emotional Conjuration

Undyne's Stand has the power to manifest environmental alterations based upon her emotional state, allowing her to twist terrain and shape the world around her. For instance, a sense of Burning Justice allows her to set anything within ?'s range on fire, sorrow would allow her to weigh objects down, and joy would let her make things and entities lighter and faster.

In other words, her Stand basically allows Undyne the kind of environmental influence and buffs/debuffs that some classes of magic users in RPGs do-druids and bards come to mind.


	6. Ch 6: The Fray, in Dark Blue! Also Dogs!

"Maaaan, she's supposed to be here by now!"

The child sighed, bouncing back and forth between his toes and the balls of his feet to try and see over the field of foliage covering the stone pathway.

He ignored several of his classmates walking by, jumping out of the grate to Sewer and passing by the checkpoints to Snowdin or Hotland, depending on where they lived. It wasn't like they had anything to do _after_ school, and it was the middle of the week. So why was _he_ the only one waiting for Undyne?

His patience running thin, the monster kid decided to take some initiative on his pseudo-stalking routine for once and try to find his idol first. It's what she probably would've done, anyways. Having seen her go to Snowdin a lot, he decided to check along that road first.

"Wonder if I'll be able to see her beat another one of those SOULs?" He asked himself as he nimbly hopped across the slippery stones dotting the local tributary. Wildly flapping his tail to keep his balance, he leapt to the other side of the river without incident, save for getting his clothes and backpack soaked from all the splashes of his perennial shortcut.

Not that he cared, as it was warm enough this close to Hotland that he'd dry off in minutes anyways.

"This looks like a good spot!" He declared, flopping down on the ground and crossing his legs. A sudden jolt and shake of the ground made him yelp, grimacing as he bit his tongue from the impact.

"I bet she'll show up any second now!"

And he waited. And waited. And waited.

"…atatatatataatatatatataatatatatatatATATATATATATATATATATA!"

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

Though the Kid's patience was swiftly rewarded, Undyne wasn't calmly and cooly patrolling the area like he had expected.

Rather, she was bolting right past him with a gaunt, rugged figure tucked under her arm like a football, with her disembodied armor chopping its way through the bushes before them.

Their pursuer, mere seconds behind in the chase, followed. Gracefully hopping from skip to skip, the glowing ghost hummed happily as she balanced a ball of tangled wire, lightbulbs, and eyeballs in her outstretched palm, vanishing the flying foliage thrown up by her quarry's escape along the way.

The child blinked, taking a second to process what he'd just seen happening.

"Oh, _sweet_!" He exclaimed, once he had worked out what was going on. "That was one of the escaped SOULs! She must be leading it into a clever trap! I gotta see how she'll beat it!"

Oblivious to the actual danger of the situation, the Kid hopped off his backside and ran in hot pursuit, deeper into the Underground.

* * *

 **Chapter 6:**

 **In Which Undyne Learns the Shocking Truth about Anime, JoJo Crowns Miss Underground 201X (and Chips her Crowns), and Flowey's Spelunking Hobby is Exposed.**

* * *

As one would expect, the scene several minutes before the child's very brief encounter with Undyne was similarly tense to what had occurred at the beginning of this account—albeit in a slightly different way.

The moment she declared the start of her "game," Sia stared down her foes. Joseph and Undyne stared back.

The former was carefully sizing up his opponent. Obviously since she was already dead, only Synchronicity would be able to harm her (not that he'd thrown more than one or two punches since that scumbag flower, anyways). He ran through scenarios in his mind, plotting and rejecting a half-dozen different plans to draw out the secret of the navy SOUL's Stand ability, and this to neutralize it.

The latter…

"Show me what you got! You take the first move—I'll defeat you no matter what you can do!"

…was not.

The ghost giggled again, reaching inside her own Stand in a gap of wires and bright, energy-efficient lightbulbs. "No. I _insist_ -you take the first move. You can't play a [game] yourself if you win in one move, right? It's all about the dance between _two_ players." She pulled out a loose bulb, tossed it in the air, and noticed as it landed perfectly bulb-up, balancing precariously on a pointed rock by its base and somehow not falling and smashing into spectral shards.

"Okay, heads. Since you're a…what did I say before My Lord told me about better trash talk…big stupidhead, you go first."

Undyne grinned, her maw once again showing off a dental formula which had _far_ too many incisors to make actual sense. Namely, _all_ incisors. "Fine by _me_!"

Her eye glowed green, and Sia's magical aura was subsumed by a green glow. She looked down at the spear which had appeared at her feet.

The SOUL picked it up, holding it like a baton, and giving it a few experimental twirls. Then, she shrugged, shook her head, and unceremoniously tossed it over her shoulder.

"I don't need any of your _handicaps_ to win," she said, crossing her arms and sending another cloud of chalk-white dust all around her. "I've got my [integrity.] All I need to win is me, and my Stand. No one can win a solo competition against me."

Undyne laughed. "So humans really _are_ as arrogant as I've heard! Stupid, too!"

She wasn't oblivious, and she _did_ instinctively know JoJo was glaring at her, even with her nonexistent peripheral vision. Maybe it was a side effect of her Stand giving her empathic abilities. Or maybe she'd already gotten him pegged down as a huge asshole.

"Well _that_ won't foster teamwork, now, will it?" Slowly, Sia bent down into a deep split, stretching phantom muscles for her upcoming routine of murder. "I heard you two talk in that house I annihilated, before. Aren't you supposed to be _friends_?"

"That's _none_ of your business!" Proving Papyrus wrong and forcing the _living_ human into the legendary [friend zone] could wait. This _dead_ human had to go first, before it hurt anyone else.

She stomped her foot, and dozens of spears fell into reality from nothingness. With a mighty "NGAAAAAAH!" she sent them flying at Sia, at speeds that would kill her all over again if they hit.

Which was a _big_ "if," unfortunately enough for our heroes. Sia continued her splits, moved on to leaning on her other leg, and willed her Stand to move forward.

Accordingly, the giant ball of copper and chrome moved forward. The spears approached it, faster and faster and faster, fast enough to smash it to pieces.

But, before the weapons hit true, they began to flicker, as if they were lights about to burn out. Then, they vanished, the momentum and destructive energy of the strikes going with it.

Undyne's confident expression shifted briefly, turning to one of confusion and uncertainty. It hadn't _deflected_ them, and she _knew_ they were about to hit, so…did she teleport them somewhere? Had she stolen one of those magic storage boxes Asgore had signed into whichever public utilities bill he was working on last month, and put it inside her Stand to nullify her attack?

"Not bad!" she declared, her good spirits and conviction returning in a flash. "So, that's _my_ turn! Go ahead and show me what you got?"

"…I think I'll pass."

" _Again_?!" exclaimed Undyne. She whirled to look at JoJo, then back to Sia, her eye squinting in bemusement. "What is _with_ you humans and wasting an opening for a decisive blow?"

Sia took a few steps forward, to roughly within a body length or two of the other side of the bridge opposite Undyne's, and stopped, smiling serenely.

"It's not that I don't _want_ to attack or anything," she explained, as she brushed down her tutu to try and get rid of the dust eternally stuck to her clothes—a futile effort, to her frustration. "I also don't want to dishonor our duel or mess with the game. I'm sticking to the rules, technically speaking."

"…Then why'd you skip your turn?"

"I want to prove something to you." Sia took another step towards the duo, across the bridge, and rested on the first plank. She proper her elbow up on the pillar supporting the rope railings, rested her chin in her palm, and just _looked_ at them.

"That it's [useless,] to fight me. No matter how many spears you throw, you can't win."

She grinned, even as Undyne prepared another onslaught of spears. Her enemy sent them flying, only for them to vanish again as they approached The Fray.

"It's useless, useless, useless," she repeated, sighing with an exaggerated air of melancholy as the projectiles all failed to hit their mark.

Undyne's eye narrowed, her face curled into a dark frown. She grabbed more spears out of the air, drew her open hands behind her, and thrust forward, in an imitation of what looked like that beam attack from a fighting game JoJo vaguely recalled playing at an arcade once.

More spears flew forward fast, but additional projectiles manifested _behind_ the SOUL as well, to strike from multiple sides.

"Your pride just screwed you over!" Undyne announced, as the spears rocketed towards their target. "If you'd kept my spear, you could defend yourself! But now—"

All it took was for The Fray to move a few inches closer to its user—that was all she needed to parry the blow. The microsecond the spears moved within a radius of the sphere—around two meters by JoJo's best guess—they wavered and vanished yet again.

No matter their speed, no matter which direction they came from, The Fray just _stood_ there, and reduced Undyne's mighty magics to nothingness.

Undyne moved to go for another round, stepping forward. She heard footsteps behind her—probably JoJo trying to stop her. Like she was going to back down from an opponent, especially one like _this_!

"You see?" Sia asked, taking another step as spears from all four corners of the compass emerged and promptly vanished again once they had entered The Fray's range. "It's useless. Useless, useless, useless, _useless, useless, USELESS_!" With the last repetition of the phrase, she broke into another fit of giggles, as she took another step towards her enemies, now a scarce three meters away.

"I'll be using my turn now," she announced, as Undyne glared at her with the intensity of a thousand suns. "Shame that all your spirit could do amounted to nothing, huh? All the determination and will to win won't save you if you're too clumsy to clear the bar—the bar is my Stand, of course."

"You…" Undyne bit her tongue, stopping herself from flinging foul insults at a pretreen. Even though she was a psycho killer, she had her standards!"

Before the two could strike at one another, they heard a cough from behind Undyne.

"I'll give you this," Joseph announced, as he stepped out from behind Undyne and faced Sia directly. "All those ballerina jokes are at least the kind that are so bad you've _got_ to laugh at them. Sans'd _love_ them!

"But if you're bringing up a bar," he continued, casually leaning on the railing, "there's more than one way to clear it. I mean, we don't _have_ to jump over it to win! We just have to find another way!"

"Oh, you have got to be _kidding me!_ " the Captain of the Royal Guard snarled, sparing an aggravated glance back at JoJo. "We are _not_ using your [secret technique!] I'll _never_ do that!"

Unxepcetedly, Sia gasped. "Secret technique! I see—My Lord warned me that all humans had a special power!"

"His _sucks_!"

"Well, _I_ want to see it," pouted the SOUL, putting her hands on her hips as her Stand's eye rolled in irritation. "I'll kill you regardless, so you may as well do everything you can to struggle to win, even _if_ it's all useless in the end!"

Undyn growled and prepared to leap into the air for an areal assault, but Joseph's hand firmly grabbing her by the arm stopped her.

"Alright, here goes!" Joseph grinned. "My family's _ultimate, hidden technique_ —"

Undyne's eye bulged, and the air around them blasted into unbearably humidity from her anger along. "Oh, you _son of a bit_ —"

"RUN AWAAAAYYY!"

With that, Joseph summoned Synchronicity, and stamped down as hard as he possibly could on the plank keeping him and Undyne aloft on the bridge.

The sound of splintering wood, the loud "ARO!" from his Stand, and Undyne's sharp objection that it was _not_ funny the first time, and it was a _huge dick move_ blended together into a cacophony of sound and noise, as the two plummeted off the bridge and to safety. At least, for now.

Sia blinked (both her eyes and that of her Stand) in surprise, then smirked. "Heh. Solid 7 out of ten. Good buildup, but the execution's lacking if your partner doesn't go along. Onto the next one!"

* * *

" _I TOLD you not to—_ "

Ignoring her for now, Joseph flung a thorn at the craggy cliffs as they fell, then tightened his grip on Undyne with his other hand.

Both of their bodies shimmered, and then slammed against the ground, none the worse for wear.

"It was either move and regroup _now_ , or die back there," he snapped at Undyne as the two got to their feet. "Plus, we have to beat her to whatever she's after, and _I hardened our bodies to survive the fall, but it won't save us from her Stand we need to move now_!"

Though harried and run-on in nature, JoJo's interjection was enough to get Undyne's attention for now. She looked up, and saw that Sia had already leapt off of the bridge and was rapidly descending to the ground. Even now, she had fallen several stories, and if they didn't get out of there _immediately_ …

Growling in anger, Undyne backpedalled several feet, and Joseph followed her out of the immediate range of the SOUL's landing zone.

"We're not gonna beat her head on!" JoJo stressed, as Sia gently touched down and twisted to stare at her foes. "Her Stand's _broken_! If we can double-team it, than…"

Sia didn't seem to be listening to them. She was already casually strolling past them, seemingly not even caring that they were there anymore. Her Stand, hovering just behind her, wasn't even close enough to attack Joseph or Undyne anymore—the air near them rippled from the spontaneous and constant disruption of atomic bonds it caused, but their foe didn't bother to move closer and finish them.

Had she just _forgotten_ that they were there?

"…The hell? We're _standing right here_ , man!"

"I already _told_ you, didn't I?" said Sia bluntly, still walking past them. "You're a detour. An obstacle, a stage hazard. My goal lies elsewhere."

"Don't _ignore me_!" Undyne screeched, glaring daggers (well, spears) at Sia ineffectually. "Even if you're invincible now, that doesn't mean the fight's over! _Nothing's_ over!"

The ghostly ballerina smirked, even as she walked on. "No, it isn't over. But we never really _started_ any fight, did we? Fighting means we attack each other, right? And besides, my win condition's elsewhere."

Undyne stopped glaring spears for a moment, the wave of weapons crashing to a halt for a brief second. "Win condition? What're you talking about?!"

"I'm _curious_ ," Sia continued. "I'll reveal that there's something _valuable_ in the area—where we are right now. I'm confident I can find it before you can. Not every competition is about fighting—this one's a scavenger hunt. A side-quest. Treasure hunt. Whatever you wanna call it."

"…Are you kidding me."

"Of course not. I _never_ joke when a trophy's at stake." Even as she continued on her search, the ghost looked back at them. "Whoever finds 'it' first wins by default, right? But a game's unfair if you have no chance of winning. So, even if My Lord wouldn't want me to waste time and risk messing with _his_ plans, I'll give you a hint."

Abruptly, she stopped walking. "Wait, was I going for a ballerina theme or a _game_ theme with my jokes? I forgot which one My Lord suggested…Not like I really care, I guess?"

As Undyne persisted in continuing her fruitless assault on Sia, Joseph fidgeted in place, digging his feet into the dirt as he scratched his head in confusion. "Quit monologuing and just _tell_ us, damnit!"

"Oh, alright. If you say so." The SOUL walked onwards, her spectral feet disintegrating the rocks and puddles in her way. "I'll give you a clue. A cue. Cue the music?" Though her face was turned from them again, JoJo could tell she was frowning, probably in irritation. "Crud, I can't think of a good pun. The fishie'd know about something valuable here."

Panting, Undyne finally stopped throwing spears, clenching her fists in rage as she glared at the SOUL. "Would you just _say_ …hang on. _That_?! You're after _that_?! But that's just a treasure lying around for a hero to find in the _middle_ of a quest! It's not _important_ enough to be _anyone's_ end goal!"

"Oh, so you _do_ know?" The SOUL laughed again. "Well, then you should know I'm already ahead of you. All I need to do is have my Stand break down the walls of the loot room where it's sealed, and I win. But you're behind on the game, aren't you?"

"Are we, now?" Joseph wriggled in place, leaning down to stretch and dip his hand in a pool of water, moving to splash the sweat and grime of the recent struggle off of his face. "You _sure?_ "

Suddenly, Sia saw the purple and green vines poking out of the ground dozens of feet ahead of her, and stopped mid-step. She cupped her thumbs and forefingers into circles, propped them up to her eyes to imitate binoculars, and tried to get a closer look.

"Guess again!"

"ARO!"

The floor beneath Joseph and Undyne shimmered, then _liquefied_ , transforming in the blink of an eye from solid rock to mushy mud.

Whooping as if he were on a roller coaster ride, Joseph rid the tunnel the vine had eked out meters underneath Sia, a confused Undyne right behind him.

In a handful of seconds, the vine Sia had seen vanished, and opened up into the mouth of the makeshift slide JoJo had created. Followed by its two rides.

"You were playing the wrong version of your 'game!' Got that?!"

Sia moved to follow them, but her high-heeled shoes weren't the best footwear to use when wading through a messy cube of mud and gravel. In spite of her supposedly ethereal nature, she slipped, and fell on her backside, her Stand likewise wobbling in place from the fall.

Undyne spared a glance back at Sia's momentary slip. Then, as the SOUL got up, she grabbed Joseph under her arm, crouched low to the ground in an imitation of a sprinter's stance, and bolted off in the other direction.

"Hey, _hey!_ Would it _kill_ you to let me move by myself?!"

* * *

They had only been running for a few minutes, but Sia was already closing in on them. Undyne felt the air near her crackle with the energy of The Fray's power, as the hallways of rock and stone behind them _dented_ to create spherical holes in the surroundings—as if Sia had taken a giant ice cream scooper to them.

"Crap! This _had_ to be the same road with the protected grass on it!" Undyne rolled her eyes as the chase continued towards a field of miraculous, self-sustaining wall of weeds. "Sorry, Asgore, but this's more important!"

"If you won't _put me down_ , then how the hell are you going to get us through there without getting disintegrated?"

"Don't need to!" Undyne yelled back to Joseph. "Okay, time to see what you can do! [The Messenger!]"

Undyne's Stand sprung fully formed out of her body, created a multicolored, shining spear in a flick of its wrist, and lunged forwards.

"ATATATATATATATATATATATATA!"

The Stand sliced through the weeds as easily as it did through air, and, like a farmer reaping through their crops, decimated the entire field of foliage in short order.

Dashing through her Stand, Undyne sped ahead of Sia, giving them a few second's worth of breathing room as the burst of confidence she felt from her newfound power literally propelled them forwards.

"Guess all your talk about heroic willpower or whatever's actually paying off," JoJo noted, watching as the burst of wind Undyne's willpower had generated created an updraft furthering their momentum away from their pursuer. "You _do_ know where to go, right?"

"Damn right!" Undyne's grin widened, once again showing a disturbing amount of teeth. "But if _she_ does, I have to move _fast_!

Some feet ahead, a familiar, skeletal figure in a hoodie leaned against the wall next to an ice cream stand, biting at an unwrapped "Nice Cream" bar purchased from the destitute-looking stall's owner.

"Hey, Sans! Look out!"

Sans didn't have any eyes to actually move, so Undyne couldn't tell if he actually looked up from his ice cream to see her and JoJo run past him. Or to see the rampaging ghost heading right towards him.

"That means _dodge, damnit_!"

"hm?" Sans tilted his head in confusion, finally turning his skull up to see the encroaching ballerina.

From behind his back, a ghostly, rotting hand emerged, grabbed him by the hood of his jacket, and hoisted him high into the air. Unfortunately, the suddenness of the rescue made him drop his already-slippery snack, and the majority of the ice cream and its stick (alongside the etched-in uplifting message of support he had been looking forward towards) broke into nothingness as Sia passed by.

"aw. i wanted that. couldn't have saved the nice cream, too? i was hungry."

As Sans argued with his Stand over the pile of melted dessert that it had failed to save, Undyne picked up the pace as she realized they were getting closer to where she _thought_ their enemy was headed.

But, as if things weren't dangerous enough, a wall of semi-transculent chains sprang into reality as they neared the goal they were all racing for, stretching across the entire wall of the corridor.

"Oh, for _fuck's sake_!" Joseph groaned, staring in dismay at the solid wall of magical metal in their path. "We;ce got to deal with _a James Bond laser trap_ along with the psycho back there!"

"Those?" Surprisingly, Undyne seemed to barely acknowledge the prescence of the chains. "Those are _supposed_ to be there! Watch!"

As they crackled with energy, the chains seemed to grow in size as Undyne and Joseph neared closer, closer, _closer_ …

Which was why it was rather anticlimactic when Undyne and JoJo simply ran _through_ the barrier as if it weren't even there, and remained perfectly safe.

"…Huh?"

Sia was not that lucky. Though her Stand's aura remained strong and kept disintegrating chunks out of the physical cave walls around her, it seemingly had no effect on the ethereal walls which had appeared, and she and The Fray ran headlong into the wall of chains.

Over the ghastly sound of thousands of metal links creaking and rustling from the movement, JoJo head Sia shriek in frusturation.

"What? _Those rules_ are still here? I call _foul_! The local judge is biased! He's _always biased_ , and gives those low scores!"

Ignoring the SOUL's rambling about rigged games, Undyne began to slow down—from a sprint, to a run, to a jog, then to a normal walking speed. Finally, she moved her arm, unceremoniously dropping Joseph to the ground, and rounded the corner into a nearby chamber within the network of caves they had been running through.

"So…we're safe?" Joseph asked, picking himself up and glancing back at the wall of chains. He watched as Sia pushed The Fray closer and closer to the cave walls in an attempt to get around the barrier. But as the walls disintegrated, the mass of chains simply expanded, replacing solid rock wall with ghostly metal bonds no matter how far she went.

"Well, if she _is_ after that, of course we're safe!"

Before JoJo followed Undyne into the chamber, he took a moment to spare another glance at the SOUL, making eye contact with her.

"Sorry! I'm calling halftime! Enjoy the show!"

With that, Joseph ducked into the room after Undyne, leaving a fuming ghost behind.

* * *

Aside from the piano sitting in the corner of the room and some security cameras, the room the two had found themselves in was totally indistinguishable from the mind-numbingly similar corridors and stratums they had passed through since they had left Undyne's house. Or, rather, what was _left_ of it.

"Alright, before we go any further, you _have to_ tell me what the hell we're looking for."

As Undyne sat down at the piano and cracker her knuckles in preparation to play, Joseph leaned on the closed hood of the instrument, glancing around the room.

"I don't know _what_ game she thinks she's playing, really," JoJo continued, "but if it's the pronoun game, I'm bowing out. So, if you could fill me in, that would be—"

"Shut up!" Undyne snapped, flipping open the cover on the keys and experimentally playing a few musical chords.

"First, I have to concentrate," she said. "Asgore made the key to the vault a musical riff, and it'll take me a few seconds to remember the right chord and crap for it. Second," she went on, voice rising in intensity, "you're on thin ice already!

"Don't think I've forgotten who you are, _human_ ," said Undyne. "You ripped us out of a fight I _totally could've won_ if I'd had enough time and more spears, you dragged _me_ into your retreat like a total _wuss_ and put God knows how many people in danger, _and_ you've been _super annoying_ this whole time!"

As Undyne put her fingers over the keys, The Messenger appeared and pointed its spear at Joseph, its tip inches away from his face.

"The only reason I haven't _killed you_ is because I haven't had the chance to befriend you and prove Papyrus wrong! But I'm _sorely tempted_ to skip all that, because you're the type of person _no one can be friends with_! You are _scum!_ "

This wasn't the first time Joseph had been called that or had been subjected to similar speeches, and he had developed a number of rebuttals and responses to fire at will with these kinds of people. However, for once in his life, JoJo kept his mouth shut. If only because they'd need some silence to end this whole mess, get whatever Sia was after, and beat that creepy kid at her own game.

Exhaling deeply, Undyne looked back down at the piano and played a short series of notes. B flat. F. E flat. B flat. D. D. E flat.

The wall in front of them began to rumble, and a portion of the stone in front of them sank into the floor.

Without even looking back at JoJo, Undyne leapt off of the piano seat, over the instrument itself, and landed in front of the newly-created door.

Inside was another near-empty chamber. This one's sole feature of note was a marble podium, the kind one would use to display historic busts or trophies.

And on the podium rested a red rock. It was meticulously shined, polished, and carved into a teardrop shape.

JoJo was no mineralogist or jewler, but something about it looked vaguely… _familiar_ to him. Was it even a gemstone? The way the light refracted off of it, it could easily be some kind of metallic ore like gold or platinum. Maybe it was magical in nature, or artificially created?

Whatever it was, Undyne stared at it. Then, she tilted her head in confusion.

"Didn't he say or was raw material or something? When'd they carve it into that?"

She looked at it some more. Then, she shrugged. "It's probably not important! So, if the SOULs know where this thing is, then I guess we have to move it to some other location to throw them off the scent!"

She moved to grab it now.

But she was unable to.

After all, she was carrying too many dogs.

"…Where the hell did _you_ come from?!"

Undyne glared at the small, white dog that had somehow appeared in her hands. There was no poof of smoke, no distortion of space like Sans's fancy teleportation spells, and not even a flash of light. This annoying dog was just… _there_ , sleeping soundly in her grasp.

"…I'M BUSY! GET LOST!" The captain of the Royal Guard began shaking the dog wildly, attempting to dislodge it from her hands. However, through means inexplicable by any logic or knowledge (human _or_ monster), it was just _stuck_ there, like it had glued itself to her.

Snickering, Joseph carefully stretched a vine past Undyne, having Synchronicity thread it through the room like a needle through a mitten still being knitted. With a dramatic flick of his wrist, he wrapped the vine around the mysterious artifact.

"What do you even _want_ , you _dumb mutt_!" In her struggles, Undyne stepped sideways, in an attempt to use the edges of the marble pedestal to help her physically pry the dog off. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, her foot happened to slam against JoJo's vine, having been taught by going to all across the room.

Naturally, Undyne promptly lost her balance, tripped on the vine, and fell on her face with a painful _thump_.

Yipping loudly from being woken out of its nap, the dog shook vigorously, then nonchalantly trotted over Undyne's body. It stuck its snout into her pants pocket, and withdrew a bone—the same one Papyrus had somehow convinced JoJo to give her as a gift a few hours ago.

Barking repeatedly (almost as if it were singing), the dog glided out of the room, giving only a brief glance to Joseph and the red stone he was now holding. Presumably, it was satisfied enough with one stolen treat to bother with another.

"…Okay, I'll just ignore _that_ …" JoJo muttered, as Synchronicity and its vines faded away. He held the artifact up to the light filtering into the hidden room through the secret door, wondering why all the secrecy was needed for some rock.

"What's with all the secrecy for _this_?"

Undyne didn't answer right away—mainly because she was busy catching her breath after having the wind knocked out of her from her scuffle with the dog.

"I've got _no_ idea," she announced, once she'd recovered from her brief scuffle with the tiny canine. "This is a vault Asgore set up to hide some national treasure—you know, the stuff they show in museums? Those are _fakes_! To make sure no one steals 'em! And _this_ was important enough to hide in the _ass-end of nowhere,_ and only about half a dozen monsters—me included, of course—know the code!"

"All for this, huh?" Joseph held the stone up to his eye. While he had always been good enough at history (the only subject he _gave_ a crap about in school), he'd never actually felt much reverence towards old artifacts or relics that he'd been dragged to on the handful of school trips he'd been forced on during his whole school experience.

But for some reason…this was different. Synchronicity's hand appeared next to his own, and the rock seemed to grow warmer in his hand. Just as metal coins or cell phones grow comfortably warm from absorbing body heat after handling them for long enough, the simple red stone felt…

"Ridiculous," JoJo scoffed to himself. But the words felt hollow in his mouth. His life had never been what one would call normal, but in the past few _days_ alone he'd gotten ghost superpowers, made friends with some skeletons and snowmen, fought a goat lady and a crazy fish chick, and had stumbled across far, far more oddities than he cared to count.

Really, what was a bit of déjà vu compared to _any_ of that? It was probably just a Stand thing.

"—not even listening, are you?! Lazy moron."

He sighed dramatically, realizing he couldn't tune out Undyne's rambling about…well, _anything_ forever.

"Okay, I object to 'moron!' If you didn't notice, I'm _hard at work_ trying to figure out what the hell this little pebble's for, and why Barbie Girl back there's doing her best Kool Aid Man impression to get it!"

"Does it _matter_?" Undyne took a few steps towards JoJo, and glared at him. "You've had your time to oogle it. Give it here."

She stretched out her hand. Joseph did _not_ miss The Messenger's arm appear behind Undyne, with the tip of a spear poking out from behind its masters' back.

"Hey, take it easy, alright?" JoJo moved to present Undyne with the artifact, palm outstretched in invitation, but closed his fist and yanked it back the moment she tried to snatch it from his grip. "What happened about friendship and all?"

This time, Undyne didn't shout. She didn't launch into any dramatic speeches, or do any imitations of Saturday morning cartoon heroes. She just stood there, silently and _glared_ at him.

"You know what?" she finally said, in a low, deceptively soft voice. "Forget it. You're _no one_ 's friend. You're a sadistic, careless _asshole_ who doesn't care about _anyone_. How Papyrus sees you as anything _more_ than the piece of _crap_ that you are is _mind-boggling_. It's clear now.

"Hell, I don't even _need_ to kill you, do I?" she went on, stepping around JoJo and circling him, staring him down all the while. "All I have to do is wait _one day_ for you to just walk around, and then _piss off anyone_. You're too cruel to _kill_ , and too _stupid_ to not just _keep quiet_. You? I've made up my mind. You are not worth wasting _any_ of my power on. Any of mine, any of my Stand's, _anyone's_. 'Cause, at this rate? All I need to do is wait for the week to be out, and you'll be dead. Because you, _human_ , are the single most _fucking evil_ person I have ever met."

Maybe it was the fact that she had dropped _all_ of her bombastic character tics. Or maybe it was the sheer intensity with which she spoke. Perhaps it was The Messenger having some effect, causing the sheer disgust Undyne felt towards him physically holding his mouth shut. Or maybe, on the tiniest, smallest, most embarrassing past of JoJo's being, he _was_ scared by her. Scared in the _second_ time he'd ended up in this whole country.

But for once, Joseph Joestar had nothing to say.

At least, until he heard a loud shriek from outside, followed by more evil giggling.

Without responding, he rushed outside to check out what the hell was going on. Staring at where JoJo had been, Undyne followed in short order.

* * *

What they found should _not_ have been surprising. And it wasn't. But it was no less horrifying.

Locked in a tight headlock, Sia held a small child—orange, reptilian, and armless—in her grasp. About three meters behind her, The Fray hovered menacingly, the air charged with dangerous amounts of static.

Instantly, it became clear what she was doing, and why.

"You took so long in there with your 'halftime,' I figured I would get some company while I waited," she said, tightening her vicegrip on the Monster Kid's throat as she monologue. "And guess what? Not five feet away, this little weenie was hiding behind a rock. He was waiting for his _hero_ to arrive."

"Hi, Undyne!" the living child gasped through his restricted windpipe. "I'll get to see you fight evil after all today!"

"Tch. Dummy." Almost playfully, Sia flicked the child's largest head-crest, bemused at his total lack of any ability to sense danger. "But he's right. I'm the villain. My Lord's goals are evil, and there's no lying about it. Which makes you the heroes, right? And the heroes have to save the day from the villains. For example, they always save the hostage, right?"

"You…" Undyne clenched her fist in fury, and stepped forward.

"Oh, no you don't." In response, The Fray drifted closer to Sia and her captive. Its wielder was unaffected by the Stand's sheer destructive power, but the kid was not. The very edge of his tail brushed against the aura of annihilation the sphere emitted, and the outermost layer of his scaly skin on its tip turned to nothing. Yelping in pain, he whipped it close to his body, glancing back at the scrape on the appendage.

"I don't need to tell you that I _will_ kill him if you don't give me the Dagger right now," Sia went on, as casually if she were telling someone the time. "But…aw, heck, I'll do it anyways. I _will_ kill him if you don't give me the Dagger right now."

"Let the _kid go_ , you brat!" Snarling, Undyne summoned a swarm of spears into space behind her, and hissed.

"Not talking to you." Uncurling a single finger from her chokehold, she waggled it in an imitation of a parent scolding a child. "I'm talking to _him_. You're the _hero_ who has it, right? I can feel its energy, right from your pocket."

Joseph stared at her. Then, he scoffed, and turned his back on her. "Uh…no? If you get this, your mysterious master wins, right? So all I have to do is just _not_ give it to you. Easy."

" _That_ 's the routine you're going with, huh?" Sia's grip tightened further, and the Kid's face turned slightly blue as her hand closed over his mouth. "You see the dust on my clothes. This is from all the monsters I killed in life. Will you be able to live with yourself if an audience member gets hurt or killed in our little game?"

Joseph paused mid-step. Though no one could see his face, his eyes flashed in worry for a moment. It took him a moment to regain his usual confident swagger.

"What, for a kid I've seen for a grand total of _five seconds_ on a passing school bus…boat?" Joseph barked out a laugh—a laugh that was obviously faked. "Get real. Frankly, kiddo, I don't give a damn."

He took another step forwards, and the sound of his footstep was immediately followed by a bloodcurdling scream.

Undyne's breath hitched in her throat. Joseph stopped in place, before he could move even a millimeter forwards.

He pivoted around on the balls of his feet. In front of him, he saw Sia still holding the other child…now short the tiniest and most distal spine on his tail. Blood began to steadily drip down on the cold, unfeeling stone of the Underground.

"Last chance." Sia smirked. "Either you give me the stone and I leave before killing anybody else, or you step up and _try_ to beat me and my [The Fray,] and die trying. I'm killing this icky kid regardless: he's annoying."

Undyne immediately moved forwards, the spears behind her multiplying exponentially in preparation to skewer this ghost head to toe.

But before she could do that, or before Sia could go any further in hurting the Monster Kid, something happened. Something neither of them really saw coming.

"You. Demonic. _Freak_."

Joseph Joestar's eyes shone with righteous fury. His fists clenched into balls of absolute, pure rage. Behind him, Synchronicity shimmered into existence, ready to fight.

"RELEASE HER, SIAAAAAAA!"

In a single bound, JoJo leapt forwards, jumping to a fighting stance mere inches from The Fray's radius of destruction. He breathed heavily, teeth grinding against one another in sheer _hatred_.

"You're a _vile, inhuman abomination_!" he roared, pointing at his foes's smug face. "I don't care if you're a _kid_ , if you drag an innocent into this —a _child, for God's sake—_ I'm taking you down!"

* * *

"So _that_ 's the kind of hero you are."

Still smirking, Sia unceremoniously tossed the wounded (but still living) monster kid aside, as the Fray bobbed forward and hovered alongside her.

"You do the tough guy act all you want," she went on, stepping forward, "but in the end, you're just a softie. Just like Matthew. Just like _the King_. And…that's…the end!"

The hallway all of them were in was very narrow-only a handful of meters tall and wide, which left almost no room to squeeze through The Fray's radius of destruction.

Nevertheless, Joseph leapt into the air, and grabbed onto the sign above Gerson's shop, gripping it with all of his strength.

Sia's smirk widened, and she giggled again. "You think _that's_ going to save you? All I have to do is move The Fray _a little bit_ up, and your legs'll be _gone_!

JoJo looked at her, his eyes shining with a dark, metaphorical fire. Synchronicity appeared below him, seeming _sharper_ and more physical than usual. The will which coursed through his entire body to _win_ …Would be the deciding factor in this brawl!

"Who said I was _running_ this time?"

Joseph's grin reappeared, mirroring his foe's confident smile once again. Then, Synchronicity _pulled_ backwards on thin air, and Sia felt something beneath her snap.

The ghost suddenly found it _so_ much harder to stand, even on her phantom feet. She spared a brief glance downward, and she promptly lost her balance and fell down.

"You…"

As her face met the floor, Sia saw her heels, broken off of her shoe and wrapped in thick, purple vines. JoJo must have snared her feet while she wasn't looking, and she had lifted The Fray _just_ high enough to leave them unaffected by its ability!

The Fray stumbled in turn, wobbling in mid-air and losing its momentum. That was exactly the opportunity JoJo was waiting for—immediately, he dropped off the signpost, and dashed right at the disembodied SOUL.

"Gotcha!" Joseph closed in on Sia. Synchronicity drew its fist back behind him, preparing to slug her right in the face. "Now you're _mine_!"

But even as Sia's legs remained entangled in JoJo's vines, she glared defiantly at him.

"Clever. But not _good enough_. My turn!"

Still on her knees, she whipped her hand in front of her face, middle finger propped and bent behind her thumb as if she were about to flick something at JoJo.

Synchronicity's fist blasted forwards…

...and at the exact moment of impact, Sia's hand darted out to meet it, and she _flicked_ with overwhelming force, coming into contact with Synchronicity's knuckle.

In spite of all known laws of physics or common sense, the little girl's tiny finger pushed back against the giant Stand's fist. Joseph heard—and felt—something crack inside his hand, as the bones in his fist fractured and cuts split open across the length of his hand.

"GAAAAH!"

"Did you forget?" Sia asked, brushing the dirt off of her tutu as she spoke. "My Stand is very powerful, true, and you did just use its range against it. But… _I'm_ still here. You didn't think it was just _The Fray_ that killed all those monsters when I was alive, did you? Hatred is power. And emotion resonates with the SOUL, and makes _you_ stronger. Magic and Stands…two different styles which go great together, like peanut butter and bananas."

"You're ruining _perfectly good peanut butter_ with that?" Joseph grunted. His broken hand hung limply at his side, pain already dulled from the adrenaline boiling in his blood. He drew Synchronicity's hand back, the fingernails sliding back to allow thick, whip-like vines to emerge for a strike which didn't risk breaking his hand against her sheer power.

But Joseph felt energy buzz at the back of his skull as he prepared to strike this blow. He didn't need to turn around to know that Sia had stalled _just long enough_ for The Fray to get moving again. He probably only had a few seconds to live.

JoJo gritted his teeth, arched his back to avoid the field as long as possible, and desperately tried to find room to dodge or hide from The Fray.

Sia smirked, and commanded her Stand to finish JoJo with a wave of her hand.

The Fray moved forward. Closer…closer… _closer_ ….

Farther…farther… _farther_ …

"W… _what_?!

Sia began to pull her Stand towards herself more forcefully, but it couldn't move. Out of nowhere, winds blowing at Mach speeds slammed into it, pushing it against the rapidly-disintegrating walls of Waterfall and away from JoJo.

"You know…I'm only saying this _once_ , _human_ , so listen up!"

From behind JoJo, Undyne emerged, her hair blowing dramatically in the stormy weather which had spontaneously come into reality.

"I was wrong about you," she said, shaking her head. "I thought you were a prick. An arrogant, lazy, asshole who gets off on annoying everyone around him. And guess what?!"

The ghost's eyes widened as she realized what was going on. Behind Undyne, she could see The Messenger pointing a single finger in the same direction the wind was blowing, taking The Fray further and further away from its master. It must've been causing this!

"I _was right_!" Undyne announced, striding forward to stand beside JoJo.

"And before _you start_ , I ain't done!" she continued, preemptively cutting JoJo off. "You're a jerk…but I saw you save that kid. You went forward to fight an enemy _way_ out of your league, risking your life, to vanquish evil and save everyone!

"I figure…anyone who can do that's gotta have _some_ redeeming qualities!" Undyne grinned—the first genuine, non-angry or smug smile JoJo had seen her have so far—and grabbed JoJo's intact hand, helping him to his feet.

"About _fucking time_ you calmed down," he huffed. "So, no more trying to kill me? We're good now?"

Sia tried to charge forwards and strike the duo with her own two hands, but felt herself blown against the wall, same as her Stand was being whisked away to the depths of Waterfall.

"We're _better_ than good!" Undyne pointed at her Stand with her free hand, which had now moved on to pointing with _both_ hands at the rapidly disappearing The Fray. "What you said before, about The Messenger's abilities being powered by my emotions? That's it right there! The bond we've developed…our hearts beating as one, as two fire-forged friends fight against evil…our wills, pushing back against the world to blow these villains apart…that's my Stand's power!"

"Not…possible," Sia stuttered, barely managing to get the words out of her mouth against the hurricane of force pressing down on her. "The Fray…destroys anything…"

"Are you _sure_ about that?" JoJo asked. "I saw earlier…you slipped in the mud Synchronicity created when we slid under your Stand, and that wasn't destroyed at all! Same with all those puddles you splashed through when you were chasing us!

"I should've figured it out sooner," he went on, laughing. "The Fray…it can only destroy objects in a _solid_ state of matter!"

"….Annnd you lost me," Undyne said, frowning in confusion. "Okay, Mr. Know it All, care to explain that one?"

Ignoring Sia's struggles to _stand_ , let alone strike another blow, Joseph cleared his throat to explain.

"Matter's got four states of existence," he said. "Solids, liquids, gases, and plasma. The Fray probably works by breaking apart the rigid ties holding together objects…but the ties holding the other three types are _loose already_! Especially wind, since that's just gases moving really quickly!"

"Oh. _Oh_." Chuckling, Undyne scratched the back of her skull, smiling sheepishly. "Guess I should pay more attention to Alphys's mumbo jumbo about chemistry. Guess her Stand's not all it's cut out to be!"

Their conversation was cut short by laughter. To be precise, giggles.

"That…may be true." Both of them turned around to see Sia bent to her knees, her hand wrapped around a fistful of pebbles on the cave floor. "All to true. But you've forgotten about _me_! I've still got my ghost magic, and I can _kill you_ from over here!

She drew her hand back, ready to throw the stones at breakneck speeds. With her strength, it'd be similar to getting hit point blank with a shotgun!

But, as she was about to throw, she cried out in pain, collapsing to the floor again.

"Remember what we _just_ said?" Undyne asked. "You're useless against liquids and gases. You think I _didn't know_ where I was blowing you?"

Curious, Joseph called forth Synchronicity, sending his Stand to look down the deep tunnel The Messenger had forced The Fray to carve.

On the other side of the passage, he could make out the faint sounds of running water, and saw the titular waterfall this hamlet was named for.

In the middle of the downpour, The Fray stood, pinned down by the torrent of water and totally unable to move. Tellingly, when JoJo looked with his own eyes, he could see that Sia's clothes were now totally soaked as well.

"I know this town like the back of my hand," Undyne bragged, smile widening. "If the wind wasn't enough, then all that water weighing down in your Stand'll leave you _totally paralyzed_! You've _lost_!"

"And we've won. _Completely_!" JoJo finished.

Sia glared up at them defiantly. Her teeth clenched in rage, as if she was struggling to escape her own skin to attack them and tear them apart.

"You wanna do the honors?" Joseph asked, dramatically bowing away to let Undyne take care of the SOUL.

"Why just me?" Undyne laughed, as The Messenger faded away. "It's always more fun with a _friend_ , after all!"

"Fine by me." Synchronicity floated over to Undyne, its intact hand curling into a fist. "Sorry, Sia. This game's over, and _you lose_!"

"NGAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

"ARORORORORORORORORORA!"

The SOUL of the dead human would've been beaten badly enough if only JoJo _or_ Undyne had dealt with her.

But the combination of both Synchronicity's rush of strikes and Undyne's maelstrom of spears was too much for anything less then a demigod to withstand. Shrieking in pain, Sia was sent skidding across the floor from the flurry of blows, semi-transparent ectoplasm oozing out of her wounds from where blood would normally flow.

"I got more hits that you."

"Yeah, _sure_ you did!" Scoffing, Undyne dismissed her spear and looked away from their downed foe. "You were only hitting with one hand! I had, like, a _dozen_ spears going at her at once! And it was _my_ Stand that knocked The Fray out of the picture, remember?"

"Eh, I'm in too much of a good mood to argue now," JoJo turned back to look at Sia. Her eyes had rolled into the back of her skull, and her mouth flapped up and down rapidly, making no sounds. "Looks like she's going into some kinda ghost spazzing mode…or something.

"Yeah, I should probably take care of that before she destroys the goods." Undyne stepped forward. But, her footsteps slowed, and stopped not too far from where she had begun.

"Uh… _How_ do I do this?" She asked herself. "I know I'm supposed to absorb it, but where do I _put_ it? Do I just shove it inside _my_ SOUL— _don't even start_ —or put it my pocket, or what?"

JoJo shrugged. " _You're_ the monster here. You would know more than me, for once." Sia had begun babbling, whispering slurred and unintelligible words in her barely conscious haze—Joseph rose his voice slightly to speak over her. "Maybe you just…touch it?

"Shut up and _listen_."

Abruptly, Sia's eyes refocused. But now, they lacked the eerie glow they had possessed during their entire fight, and the magical aura surrounding her seemed… _brighter_ somehow.

"I'm doing everything in my power to _fight_ My Lord's orders, and I have something you _need_ to hear," she hissed through clenched teeth.

"…The hell?" Undyne pulled back her outstretched hand, brow furrowed in bemusement. "Are you just spouting crap now to delay your recapture or something?"

"Did you think I _wanted_ to do that?" Sia spoke slowly, as if each word had to be forced out through a clenched and compressed windpipe, each syllable causing her pain. "You think I _wanted_ to be at some f— _My Lord's_ beck and call to get some little rock for him?"

Joseph stepped forward, glaring suspiciously at Sia. "You're not going to use some 'I was mind controlled into killing so many people and trying to murder everyone I saw' excuse, are you?"

"What? No, that was all me. It's being _My Lord's_ toadie that I'm being forced into. Why do you think we're out and about in the first place?"

"You…escaped, right?" Undyne asked.

"Don't you pretend you haven't figured it out already," the ghost snorted. "You're smart enough to beat me, so you _must_ be smart enough to know what happened. All six of us…we were let loose and empowered by Our Lord to run some errands for him. But guys like him…they never spring people without some rules to follow. I'm using every scrap of [integrity] I have to go against his control right now."

"So you _didn't_ break out on your own?!" Undyne exclaimed. "There…is there a _traitor_ trying to start an insurrection or something?"

Sia managed a bitter laugh, then winced again. Squinting, JoJo could just barely make out phantom, barely-visible bonds wrapped tightly around her body. The thick, tightly-coiled vines constricting her throat stood out immediately, now that the glowing aura of her magic had faded, but he could see that parts of her body were now transparent, exposing organs and muscle beneath her skin.

And what sprung out immediately, alongside the topmost-bindings, were the blue –tinged, metallic chains wrapped tightly around her heart. Every few moments, the vines snaking through her body would try and wrap around the heart, only for the chains to pulse with energy, pushing the constricting roots away.

"I only have a little bit before he pulls me back, so I'll tell you what I can." Sia sneered, laughing again. "My Lord is…exactly who you think he is. JoJo. The Dagger is only one part of his plan—URK!"

Sia was suddenly yanked backwards, the vines going taut as she was pulled away from Joseph and Undyne. She was stopped by the wall, but her spectral form was already starting to sink into the bedrock.

"Hey, _wait_!" Undyne commanded. She lunged forward, planting her hand square on Sia's forehead. She tried to _will_ the SOUL to meld with her, but both sets of bonds chaining the SOUL down were having none of it. The dead human's spirit remained inviolate. At least, to her.

"Well, hurry up and _spill it_ , if we're so pressed for time!" JoJo demanded. "Is he…trying to become God, or something? That's what types like _him_ always tried to pull in comics!"

Even as he head sank into the stone, Sia shook it wildly. "Not a mere _god_. My Lord…he seeks to [take the throne]. To hold all the universe, space-time itself, in his thrall. He needs us…you…more…"

As her face was pulled all the way through the stone walls, she managed to gasp out one last warning before she was silenced.

"Find him. Kill him, destroy the Castle he needs, just _stop_ him. He's…at [the edge of this world]. There, you will fight him. And if he wins…we _all lose_."

With that, Sia vanished, leaving behind two very confused and frustrated warriors.

"Oh, hi, Undyne! And JoJo."

Before either of them could begin trying to puzzle out Sia's cryptic remarks or go after her, they heard Papyrus approach from behind them.

"I finally got out from the hole!" he proclaimed proudly, Thriller throwing some pebbles into the air to imitate celebratory confetti. "So, I see you two aren't trying to kill each other anymore! Glad to see you made friends!"

"Uh…yeah! Told you I could do it!" Undyne cheered, and slammed her hand down on Papyrus's shoulder blade. He winced as her hand pressed painfully on the five-pointed star emblazoned on his shoulder—the matter transplant he'd received from JoJo was still healing. "I won! So now—"

"Wait. Wait wait _wait_."

Both monsters looked over at JoJo, who was now standing by the wall Sia had been pulled through. He massaged his temples, then slid his hands down his face to cover his mouth.

"Oh, _nooooooo_ ," he moaned. "There really is only _one_ person it could be, couldn't it? Sans _warned_ me, but if _he's_ behind all this shit…"

"Eh? What's wrong?" Papyrus walked over towards JoJo, and looked carefully at the wall both of them were facing. "Is there a hidden passageway here? Did the SOUL you were fighting use a diabolical false wall to escape?"

"No, that's not it," JoJo snapped, looking up to glare at Papyrus. "The SOULs—all of them—there's someone else pulling the strings. And there's only one person that could be. The only person I've ever met who actually…kind of _scares me_. It's him."

Joseph's unbroken hand clenched tightly into a fist, as he took a deep breath and prepared to explain who was behind all of their troubles, and who was out to kill them all.

"It's [Flowey.]"

* * *

"Hee heee hee. I think you gave them _too_ many spoilers, dontch'a?"

Chuckling, Flowey snaked around the dark, tiny chamber they were in-a small pocket of dirt, barely five feet tall and wide.

He turned up to look at the SOUL suspended in thin air above him, glowering silently at him.

"So, you managed to slip my leash and give away some of my plan?" Flowey's sadistic smile deepened, and he rose upwards on outstretched vines, eventually coming to look down upon his failed minion. "Big deal. You think that _changed_ anything?

"They have _no chance_ of beating me," he went on, lowering himself to the floor and approaching a small pile of junk and discarded items. "They can't _destroy_ the Dagger, and I've got everything else I need _right here_. And no matter what they do… _I win_."

He giggled to himself as he hoisted a small purple notebook out of the trash pile, and dusted it off with his petals.

"You really _were_ a disappointment, weren't you?" he said, yanking upon the vines at Sia's throat and relishing her gasp of pain. "You _and_ the last one. All that power I gave you, and what do you have for it? One dead dog, some snot-nosed brat with a boo-boo, and _nothing else_.

"It's time we thought _outside the box_ , hm?" He opened the journal, and grimaced. "Not _my_ favorite author, but you'll do, Four-Eyes."

Grabbing the pen from its holster on the spine of the journal, he uncapped it and jotted down a single word on the first blank page.

Awaken.

"You know, maybe it's _better_ they know what I'm doing," he continued, as he effortlessly pulverized Sia's incorporeal form and dropped it with the desecrated orange husk in the corner of the room. "May as well have some more _fun_ before I [take the throne,] right?"

He closed the journal shut, the four-pointed star on his top-right petal bending slightly as he swayed from handling the small tome.

"After all, I've had _aeons_. It's not going anywhere."

\- TO BE CONTINUED


	7. Ch 7: Rumble in the Rocks! Time for STOP

"Whoops. Guess we got a bit outta hand fighting that SOUL? Sorry, man."

"Oh, well. It's not a _huge_ deal. I've till got the rest of the river to ride along."

The figure in the cloak looked back at the enormous pile of boulders blocking the way to Hotland and the capital, then shrugged, untying the rope holding their vessel to the river's pier. "Still…I'd like it very much if you could get it fixed soon. It'd get boring, seeing the same scenery again endlessly, right?"

"Tell that to _everyone_ ," Undyne muttered, gesturing at the cavern walls pressing down upon them all every hour of the day. "But for the _river_ , I've got my people working on clearing it all out. Should be done by the end of the week."

Muttering its gratitude, the figure glided off towards Snowdin, leaving only the Royal Guard's Captain and a gargantuan pile of rocks blocking off the river behind.

She was about to start the long walk back to the ruins of her house to salvage anything else she could of her weapon collection from the wreck, but was distracted by a call coming on her phone. One glance at the caller ID told her everything she needed.

"Asgore!" she said, the instant the call picked up. "We've got the…thing…the second SOUL was after! Want me to drop it off at New Home or anything?"

"Er…May wanna make sure you got the right number, sport."

The voice that picked up wasn't Asgore's—at least, not completely. He sounded awfully like him, but his voice was distorted somewhat, and carried a musical, mellow twang her King's voice lacked.

It took her a second to remember who this voice belonged to—she'd rarely seen him speak, as he was usually silent and just standing by Asgore all the time.

"Oh, you're his personal bodyguard, right?" Undyne paused for a second, trying to remember if this monster was technically on her payroll or not. Then she remembered that, no, this guy had been around long before even her _parents_ had been born.

"Yep, that's me." She heard the rattle of metal as the figure moved on the other end of the line—in the background, she could just barely make out Asgore humming as he watered the flowers in the Royal Garden. "Warden, too. 'S why I called, actually—We've heard you beat the SOULs, but you wouldn't happen to know where they _are_ , do you?"

"Sorry, no clue," Undyne muttered, apologetically. "Papyrus said he never found where the first one landed, and the second was just _yanked_ away after we— _I_ beat it."

She heard a thoughtful _hmmmm_ on the other end of the line, but the entity didn't press her further on her slip of the toungue.

"Well, not like it's a big deal now," he went on. "My [ability's] still workin', so the guy who sprung 'em can't absorb them unless he _whacks_ Asgore."

"Which is _not_ happening anytime soon," Undyne concluded, laughing. " _No_ one can!"

"….Riiiight." The figure sounded unsure. Though, if anyone would know, it'd be Asgore's personal bodyguard, right? "Anyways, we ain't sure _who_ this fella is. Under a foot tall, all plant-like, and eyes full o' hate—that's what the folks who saw him said. Sound familiar?"

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. JoJo had brought up this "Flowey" before, but hadn't elobrated on him much, seeming oddly _angry_ when Papyrus had tried to brooch the subject after Sia's disappearance. "I think so. I'll keep my eye out."

"I think I can help you out, come to think of it." She heard the rattling of metal links being pulled taut for a few moments. Then, Asgore's bodyguard picked up the phone again.

"Two of 'em ain't moving anymore, but one of 'em…is near you. Keep an eye out, and see if you can bring it back this time—or at least find out what the heck that flower guy;s up to."

Surprisingly enough, the figure hung up there. Usually, Asgore would spend at least another minute talking, bringing up the nonexistent weather in the Underground, or at least text over a few funny pictures of fish that bore a passing resemblance to Undyne. Then again, it _was_ just his bodyguard—it wasn't as if they were actually the same guy, she supposed.

Right?

"Udnyne!" a familiar, reedy voice called in the distance. "JoJo's messing with the wreckage of your house again!"

" _Again?!_ " She turned and bolted off. She'd _just_ found a human who wasn't utterly evil like she'd thought, and did _not_ want him to end up stabbed to death oh her forks from his own stupidity!

And many miles away, the figure dropped the phone on the armrest of Asgore's throne.

"Just because he can't absorb them, doesn't mean we can't _do_ anything," he said aloud, gliding to Asgore as he gingerly placed his watering can on the other armrest. "You could _do more_. You could _fight_."

Asgore looked at the room's other occupant. His ancient eyes were tinged with hundreds of years worth of regret, sorrow, and mistakes.

That _look_ said more than any words ever could.

"I did," the King of Monsters said. "And I _won't_. I _can't_."

The figure sighed.

"Can't say I agree," he whispered, "but 's not like I can say _no_. Just keep an eye out, will 'ya?"

Asgore sat in his throne. The figure drifted closer, then sank _into_ Asgore's body.

He reached under his throne, produced a thermos full of home-brewed tea, and took a deep sip. Then, with his free hand, he put his hand top his heart, pushed _inside_ his chest, and withdrew a link of blue metal, pulsing with a faint light.

"It'll all work out in the end," he told himself. "There's no other way it _can_ go. _Ever_."

* * *

 **Chapter 7**

 **In Which Flowey asks Whose Line it Is, Anyways, Papyrus Solicits Door-to-Door NPCs Fruitlessly, and JoJo Gets High as a Kite.**

* * *

" _Now_ what is he doing?!"

"I'm…not sure!" Papyrus looked on with Undyne as Joesph rummaged around in the broken ruins of her house, even as the dust from their fight with Sia still settled. "He'd been doing that for around an hour...I've got it!" he said, snapping his fingers. "He must be building a puzzle!"

Ignoring Papyrus's rambling about puzzle construction and the importance of recycling, Undyne pushed her way past him and into the rubble of her home, getting a better look at what JoJo was up to.

"…might not work, since he can burrow through the ground," he muttered to himself, scratching out some lines he'd etched into the rock below with a sharp knife Undyne had in her collection. "So trying to set up some traps with Synchronicity's vines belowground won't work. But if I try something from the _air_ , it'll have a better chance at working. Then again, if I can find some weedkiller at that junk store we were at earlier, and I just salt the ground with that, it _could_ work."

He lifted his head from his work upon hearing Undyne's footsteps, and glanced up at her.

"You wouldn't happen to know if weedkiller works on plant monsters, do you?" he asked casually, even as he moved the scale model of a cartoonish bomb and some tiny weedwhackers made out of splinters. "Because, if it doesn't, I'll have to rework a good deal of my plans."

"Are you making some kind of plan of attack against this 'Flowey' guy?" Undyne knelt down, looking at the low-budget yet surprisingly complex model of Snowdin. "You _do_ realize he's probably not going to be there?"

"Yeah, I figured as much." Even as he spoke, JoJo set down the last mini-bomb, cleared some more rubble with a casual "ARO" from his Stand, than laid out some vines in a crude representation of the river running through Snowdin, Sewer, and Waterfall. "Which is why I'm making _more_ plans, in case we bump into the bastard anywhere else. You wouldn't happen to have a map of this town, would you? I didn't see much of it, since I spent my whole visit running for my life from Little Miss Psycho there."

Undyne tilted her head in confusion. Then, she took a seat on the wreckage of her dining room table, crossed her legs, and looked Joseph square in the eye.

"What's gotten into you?!" she demanded. "I almost kill you a couple of times, and you barely react. The SOUL back there almost disintegrates you and a couple of other innocent bystanders—you got _angry_ , yeah, but…are you _scared_ of this guy?"

JoJo dropped the vines he was clutching in his hand in surprise, and opened his mouth to speak. "I—"

He closed his mouth, and held his free hand to his chin, thinking how best to restart that sentence.

"I'm _worried_ ," he said, rephrasing his thoughts, presumably out of not wanting to admit he _might_ be out of his league with this mysterious mastermind. "I only met this guy twice, and he nearly killed me both times. Which isn't anything special—I can name around a half-dozen times I've been in a fight for my life _before_ ending up down here, and _tons more_ since then. But he's _tough_."

"So? _I'm_ tough, and you… _beat me_ ," Undyne replied, forcing those last few words out past her lingering shame and embarrassment over her past loss. "What's with all the diagrams? If you want to map out the Underground so badly, we've spent _centuries_ down here! Just Google it!"

The human inhaled deeply, and sighed. He stayed quiet for a second.

"Whenever I get in a fight, I always win by _outsmarting_ someone," he said at last. "If you can predict what your enemy does beforehand, then you can outwit him, and you've got victory in the bag. With you, with Sia, with Papryus, Toriel, and _tons_ of other people, it's always been the same. Even in a fight, I figure what someone'll do next, and then I win."

"…So, if I'm getting this right," Undyne responded, "you've got a personal vendetta against this guy. Let me guess—"

"Don't bother." JoJo sighed, then looked down at the model of an unfamiliar set of ruins to the left of the outskirts of his Snowdin model. "What you're thinking now is right. And that's 'you got outwitted by Flowey, didn't you?'"

"You got outwitted by Flowey, didn't you?" Undyne blinked, and grumbled in irritation when she realized that JoJo had pulled that trick _again_ on her. "Do you _ever_ get that wrong?"

"What do _you_ think? Just once. With _him_."

Synchronicity appeared, planted some throrns into the ground, and began slamming in splinter after splinter into them. When it was done, the thorns had become figures bearing the crude approximations of JoJo and Flowey, the latter matching the description Asgore's bodyguard had given to Undyne.

JoJo turned his hand over and pointed at the figures, and they began to move and speak.

* * *

Joseph staggered through the hallway, brushing the sweat from his brow.

"Sheesh, she was tougher than she looked."

As he walked onward, he promptly caught his foot on a vine, and fell flat on his face.

While his tumble didn't break anything, it was painful and humiliating. He got up, and kicked at the purple vine with his foot. The same _thing_ had shown up during his fight with Toriel, but it didn't look much like that _damn flower_ that he'd seen within minutes of ending up in this hellhole. What was _going on_?

He continued forward, but he scarcely got a few paces away from where he'd fallen down (again) before he heard a sickeningly-familiar laugh.

"Clever."

He immediately knew who this was. He stepped forward, and _instantly_ saw it looming before him.

Well, _looming_ was a poor choice of words, given how this guy barely reached up to Joseph's knees at his full height. Nevertheless, the flower gave off an air of unmistakable menace, and the mocking laughter was _not_ making it any less annoying.

"Verrrryyy clever," he went on, a psychotic smirk glued to his face as he spoke. "You think you're _really smart_ , don't you?"

"Big difference between thinking and _knowing_ , pipsqueak," Joseph snarked. " 'Kill or be killed,' you said? Guess what: you're _wrong_. I went through _all that_ , all those monsters and fights? And who died? _No. One_."

Flowey chuckled. "You were able to play by your _own rules_ this time. You didn't kill a _single_ person. Hee hee hee…I bet you feel _really great_."

"Damn right, I do," JoJo laughed. "And how do _you_ feel? You seemed _pretty sure_ of yourself knowing how this world worked. Guess you're not as _all-knowing_ as you thought, huh?"

"So you _spared one person_. Sue me." Undeterred, Flowey inched closer to JoJo, eventually standing only a few inches from his face. "But what happens if you meet a _remorseless, relentless killer_? One you _can't_ outsmart, or a fight you _can't_ trick your way out of?"

"Lot of 'ifs' there, buddy. Then…I'll probably just _beat them_ until they _can't_ move." Joseph leaned in close to Flowey, his face eventually resting mere inches from the abomination's head. "But I _won't_ kill them. At that last second, the inch from death, I think I'll let them live. Not because I don't _want_ to kill them—I don't, but that's not the point.

"The reason I'll keep this streak going…is to _mock you_. If you're going to keep watching me, then I'll _keep going_ how I'm going, just so I can rub it _in your face_ how you're wrong, over and over, you _sadistic little—"_

"You're _also_ using a lot of _"ifs_ ' there too, aren't you?" Flowey mockingly asked, turning his back to JoJo and scuttling back across the ground to a more comfortable patch of dirt to rest on. "Then here's another… _What if_ you're in a situation where you _can't_ win by your rules? Or at all? Will you _give up,_ and let me take the power and [take the throne] to control this world?"

"You _really_ think you can see that far into the future, huh?" Joseph stepped forward, gradually coming closer to Flowey again. He put his hand up to his neck, straining his palm to crack his joints and work out some stress induced from his climactic fight with Toriel. "Well, I can do _the same_. In fact, I know that your _very next line_ is 'There's _no way_ you can take the [king of the world] by surprise!"

Smirking, Joseph brought his hand down to his scarf, withdrew a dull knife that he'd "borrowed" from Toriel's kitchen, and hurled it right at Flowey's face. He _knew_ he would easily dodge the strike, but the _second_ he'd turn around to dodge and keep monologuing,

Joseph would be ready with a fist to his smug face!

"Hee hee. You really _are_ an idiot."

Flowey _did_ turn around, but he just _stood_ there. He simply sat there and _allowed_ the knife to come closer. And closer it came, even when it soared _into_ his face and through his entire head, splitting the entire upper half of his body in half.

JoJo's eyes widened in confusion. Then, they further widened in pain, as he looked down to see the sizable, sharpened vine now jutting out from his torso.

"Did you _really_ think I'd be so predictable?" Flowey asked from behind him, slinking between his legs to stare down the injured human face to face.

"H…how did…You do that? _No one_ 's…beaten my—"

His question was interrupted by a gasp of pain as Flowey slowly withdrew his tendril, painfully sliding past his ribs and puncture wound and returning to its normal size.

"Wow, talk about _arrogant_!" Flowey hopped through the air, and landed on his own corpse with a nauseating _squish_. "You're not the only one who knows how to pull that trick! I've had plenty of opportunities to learn how!"

JoJo fell to one leg, holding his wound with one hand and gripping the other across his knee. Miraculously, Flowey had _somehow_ missed all the vital organs, but he had to bandage that wound _now_ , or—

"I mean, did you _really_ think you could take me out with a _knife_? _Me_?! In the opening act of this tale?" Giggling, Flowey lashed out with tentacles, and wrapped himself around the bleeding, split open halves of his _other_ body.

"Well, you _did_!" Flowey lauded again, as he impaled his own body with the same tendril he had used to strike JoJo. "But it just didn't _stick_! Try as hard as you might, but killing me is [useless!] And continued to stab his own corpse, again and again. Sap, far more sap than there should have been in his tiny body, gushed from his lifeless form and pooled all over the floor

"Idiot, _idiot, IDIOT!_ " Roaring with laughter, Flowey hoisted what was left of his body high into the air, and _pulled_. It ripped open, showering him with his own gore.

"Oh…my…God!…you're _even crazier_ than I…thought." In spite of the nigh-debilitating pain in his chest, Joseph managed to get off his knees and into a crouching stance, though another spazm of sharp pain prevented him from rising to his full, towering height.

"Crazy, am I?" Flowey tilted his head in an imitation of confusion and curiosity, but his sadistic smirk returned mere moments later. "That's all relative, right? It all depends on who's talking. And _I_ am the prince of this world's future. Royalty is _destined_ to lead you _peasants_ , and there's _nothing_ you can do to change that."

The human's muscles twitched, and his eyes narrowed in rage. " _Peasant_? Who the hell _even are you_ to go on like this? Who talks like that?!"

"Hee…you really want to know?" Flowey turned around, looking up at the Underground's ceiling dramatically. "I already told you, you idiot! I'm Flowey! Flowey the Flower! But you mean _specifics_ , right? _Too bad_! Not giving any of my _surprises_ away!

"Though you even _being_ here's made things _preeeety_ interesting for me as me," he noted.

Movement, in the corner of his eye. Joseph looked down, and saw _something_ in Flowey's shadow. Rather than light reflecting his sillohete, it instead took the form of an exact copy of _him_. Every last detail, from the petal placement to the coloring, was refacted upon where his _shadow_ should be. Save for the skull for a face, and its glowing white eyes.

"I honestly expected you to _use_ it by now," he went on, his sort-of shadow mimicking his swaying from side to side as he spoke. "I guess you _can't_! So, secret—I'm a _time traveller_!"

Joseph tore his eyes away from Flowey's shadow to look at the puddles of blood littering the floor.

An idea struck.

"[Megadeth]…the power to SAVE and LOAD across time, shaping the timestream like a god…to turn back the clock, wipe the slate clean, make the world your personal sandbox game! But I can't seem to do that anymore! I _wonder why_ …"

Laughter echoed throughout the room again. However, this time, it wasn't Flowey.

"And what do _you_ think is so funny?" Smirking, Flowey swiveled in place to look at JoJo. "You're bleeding through an open wound. Even if you eat the pie the old hag gave you and heal up, you're _done_."

"And next…is 'it's impossible for you to beat me! Now or ever!' "

"I win. I always win. Now and _ever_."

Flowey abruptly stopped swaying, and Joseph took his chance the moment he saw it! Whipping his arm back, he prepared to throw the sharp, heavy rock he had scooped up from the ground when he was forced into a kneeling position earlier. Going fast enough, at a target standing still, he had no way of missing!

Or so one would think, but the moment his arm passed his head, the pain from his injury spiked up again, and the jolt of his wounds caused him to flinch in the throw. No matter what he did, it was too late for the stone to directly hit its mark.

"Really?" Flowey burst into laughter. "You really think _one lucky guess_ is going to—"

He was unable to continue that sentence. Having one's face ripped open like shredded paper by a fast-moving rock would do that to anyone.

Even as his corpse hit the floor, the not-shadow underneath him _rose_ out of the ground, as normally as one would walk into a room. The new Flowey lurched back into life, and _glared_ at JoJo.

"Looks like that ego got the better of you," Joseph said. Now it was his turn to have the mocking smile the two were apparently sharing between one another, and Flowey's face was set into one of deep annoyance. "Or, would it be you _messing with your_ corpses that did you in?"

Flowey looked down, and instantly figured out what he had done. The ripples in one particular pool of blood close to him made that very clear. He had never _intended_ to make a straight throw—he must have faked the muscle tremors from before, and skipped the stone across the blood to kill him!

"You still wanna say you're an invincible god or whatever?" As Flowey was _glaring_ at him, he quickly grabbed the slice of buttersctotch cinnamon pie Toriel had given him, and crammed it into his mouth. Joseph sighed in relief as the gaping wound in his chest _vanished_ , leaving only ripped clothing as the proof it was ever there. " _Gods_ don't get punked like that so easy, even if your line and mine had different wordings!"

"Well. Well well well."

Much to JoJo's mounting frustration, Flowey didn't break into any temper tauntrums or fits of rage over getting tricked after all his boasts. He just _laughed_ again.

"I underestimated you!" he said, his voice as inappropriately chipper as ever. "You're _not_ as idiotic as you look! Though, to tell you the truth, I never planned to kill you in the first place?"

"… _Then what the fuck was all of that just now?_ "

"Oh? Just putting the peasants in _their_ place." Flowey (and his not-shadow, which had just re-emerged from nowhere)'s face twisted at unnatural angles, as if he had suddenly grown a skull which had swapped places with the _outside_ of his face. "You, against the plans I've had going for _thousands_ of years…this is much more _exciting_ than killing you!"

With those last words, Flowey vanished into the dirt and soil, leaving behind only a simple arch leading deeper into the Underground, and a bemused and irritated JoJo to walk through it.

* * *

JoJo pulled backwards with his hand, and the tiny vine attached to the remaining makeshift puppet snapped. It broke apart, falling back into the same pile of tinder and rubble that it was created from.

"Sounds like you got your ass handed to you," Undyne said. She was unable to keep a mean-spirited smile off of her face.

Contrary to what she expected, JoJo nodded. "I did. I'm still not totally sure why he didn't just kill me there, but my guess is that he wanted to _toy_ with me. If he was really as old as he says (which I _doubt_ , by the way), then he probably just wanted to see _what_ I could do, since I _did_ manage to hit him."

"You _sure_ about that?" Undyne prodded the spot where the disassembled Flowey puppets were with her foot. "He let out the human SOULs we had. He sent one of them after the [Dagger] in that vault back there. There's no way someone like him would screw around and let a living human run free!"

"Well, you have a point…for once," JoJo agreed. As Undyne rolled her eye (having resigned herself to the fact that not all friendships could be as perpetually doting and even-tempered as she once thought), he continued.

"Normally, I'd _never_ want to do this," Joseph said, "but I'm _itching_ to find out what that little weed's up to. There's _no way_ I'll let him walk all over me and lord his power all over _me_ … _us_!"

Undyne's pocket began to spontaneously vibrate, drawing both of their attentions away from the conversation for the moment. She retrieved her phone, and checked the front screen.

" _Another_ one?! So soon?!"

"I'm going to take a wild guess here and say you mean 'another one of the SOULs Flowey's got under his thumb,' right?"

"No, it's a wedding invitation, and my lieutenant just asked me to preside over their third marriage. _Of course it's a SOUL, you punk_!"

"Hey, hey, take it easy," JoJo said, laughing and jokingly holding his hands up in the air as Undyne's now-familiar headache returned. "So, where is it this time?"

In response, Undyne grabbed her phone again, re-opened the message, and tapped on the small display of a map in the corner of the notification.

"Clifftown," she said, as a map of the village loaded onto her phone's screen. Judging by the automatic suggestion for a GPS-optimized path to it, the place was roughly an hour's walk from Sewer, or about 90 minutes from where they were now in Waterfall. "It's another one of those new towns, after Asgore started all those big urbanization projects to help curb overcrowding."

"Like Sewer," Joseph remarked. "Is there even enough _room_ for cliffs?"

Undyne stood up, and started walking away from her destroyed home, gesturing for JoJo to follow. Grudgingly, he did so.

"A couple decades back, we started carving out the inside of the mountain we were stuck under—Ebott, right? We were having trouble digging _deeper_ down, since we hit bedrock around the time the queen vanished. So, we figured, why not start going _up_ , and making more room that way? Plus it gets us closer to the sky, which is what _all_ of us want!"

"Not a bad idea," JoJo remarked, as the two walked down the road. "But wouldn't there be a ton of rubble from all that? How did everyone below avoid getting crushed?"

"Asgore handled that," answered Undyne. "It was when I was still a kid, so I don't know much of the details, but he and his bodyguard used some kind of spell which made a giant metal net, which caught all that before it fell."

"His…bodyguard?" Joseph asked. "Isn't that _your_ job?"

Undyne snorted in laughter, as they neared the edge of the tiny neighbourhood where Undyne (used to) live. Papyrus was gone—according to a text he'd sent in the middle of JoJo's story, he had went to grab everyone lunch.

"No, I protect _everyone else_!" As they kept walking, Undyne summoned The Messenger, casually having the Stand grab and punt a large stone from the nearby river into the mouth of one of the many tunnels Sia had made in their earlier chase. "He doesn't show up much, and it's usually for ceremonies and all that formal junk. He's got a _really_ weird accent, and he's always wearing a big white suit and a stupid haircut, so he's probably from before the war."

"Hang on a second. He only shows up _alongside_ Asgore…he does magic stuff with him…and he looks different from most contemporary monsters."

"…yeah, that's basically what I said. What are you saying?"

"Is his bodyguard a [Stand?]"

Undyne's steps slowed as they passed by Gerson's shop, as what JoJo was implying sunk in. "A Stand?" she repeated. "But aren't those supposed to be super rare for monsters?...Well, if _anyone_ besides me and maybe Gerson could use 'em, it'd definitely be _him_!"

"But you said he's from _before_ the war…which can't be right. Sans mention that he'd helped out with research on them, and they _don't_ look like normal humans or monsters at all." To demonstrate, he briefly caused Synchronicity to manifest by overlaying it across his body. Indeed, the golden titan only barely looked humanoid, the twisting and moving purple vines stretched all across and woven into its form made it look more like a hedge sculpture than a living person.

"So, Stands—at least for you monsters—were found a few decades ago, which is why Asgore's bodyguard looks unusual for the time. And Sans has one because he was on that project, so he was probably exposed to whatever activated Asgore's…"

Undyne tilted her head on confusion as they passed by Sans's sentry spot. Sans himself was lying down…on _thin air_ , roughly twenty feet above the stall. JoJo saw him, looked _again_ in a quick double-take, then shrugged, deciding that it'd be pointless to bother considering physical impossibilities with monsters and Stands.

"Do you have a point with any of this?" she asked, as they neared the sewer grate to Sewer where Papyrus said he would meet her.

"Where did all the other Stands come from?" Joseph finally asked, putting his hand to his chin in thought. "Toriel's, Papyrus's, Flowey's, _mine_ …it feels like something has to be connecting all this. And it's _right on the tip of my tongue_! Argh, I _hate_ it when my mind gets like this! _Tell me_ , damnit!"

"Sorry I kept you waiting!"

Bursting right into JoJo's thoughts, Papyrus also straight out of Sewer through the grate, Thriller trailing behind him with takeout containers in its hands.

"I, the Great Papyrus, had trouble deciding which food would be best for my friends!" He _posed_ dramatically, Thriller holding their lunches out to them past Papyrus's sides. "Sadly, I didn't have time to cook, since Matthew severed the wires to our gas line in our scuffle the other day, and most restaurants had too long a wait time! I left lines _four times_ because it was just _taking too long_!

"But I eventually got some pasta for you. It's not spaghetti," he admitted sheepishly, "but fettuccine is an acceptably-close relative for an informal brunch like this!"

"Sorry, we don't have time for brunch," Undyne told him, already having taken her food from Thriller and walking onwards. "Another SOUL showed up, and we have to take care of it before it can cause _any more_ damage!"

"But…we can't just _eat on the road_!" Papyrus objected, running after her. "Your intestines will get upset! Or…would that be your stomachs? I'm still not clear how organs work!"

* * *

"...Which is why Sans and I moved to Snowdin! Because our old one _shook itself apart_ when I had the band rehearse at home!"

" _That's_ why you ended up moving?!" Undyne asked, in between fits of gut-bursting laughter. "Holy crap, I thought you guys moved to avoid the _overcrowding_ or something! What did you even _play_?"

"I…don't remember the exact tune," Papyrus remarked, as they continued walking on the steep path to Clifftown, "but it wasn't _our_ fault! The _speakers_ did it! Luckly, the lawsuit someone else ran against Metatton won, so we got reimbursed for most of our belongings."

"See, _that's_ why you shop at the local stores! Or make everything yourself!" Undyne proudly pointed at herself, then slumped her shoulders in disappointment when she realized that she wasn't wearing her armor anymore, since JoJo had broken it into thousands of pieces the other day.

"All that _mass-produced crap_ breaks in a single hit!" she continued, calling out her spear from nowhere instead to continue showing off. "It's all about _quality over quantity_ , Papyrus!"

"Well, at least it's cheap," JoJo piped in. "Good for saving money. Guess that goes true for _here_ and up there."

Undyne checked the directions on her phone, then led the group right at the next fork in the road, the left leading to a breathtaking lookout point over the entire Underground that they had no time to stop at. "Okay, we've got a few minutes before we get there, so…JoJo! You next!"

"Well…what do you want to know?" Stretching out his fingers, Joseph began counting down how many interesting life stories came to mind, but gave up when he realized he had _too many_. Was that a good or bad thing? "I've got a lot, so be specific."

"Let's start with your family life!"

JoJo's smile abruptly disappeared. "…Huh?"

"You heard me! Where'd you grow up! What kind of place did you have on the surface? A big house? A gated community? A _mansion_? The way you act, it's gotta be—"

"Sorry, that one's not really interesting." Shrugging, Joseph turned away and looked further up the road. "An apartment, Granny Lucy and me, a big city near the ocean called New York…nothing special. And nothing worth sharing."

He was clearly lying, but Papyrus understood that this might not be a topic he wanted to talk about. Time to save his friend from peril!

"If you say so, then I have a _far_ better story for you! Undyne! Why don't you tell him about how you lost your eye!"

"Eh?" Undyne glanced at Papyrus. Then, she grinned.

"Alright! That story's _always_ a hit!" She cleared her throat, flipper her eyepatch up for dramatic effect, and began.

"It was the first fight I was ever in!" she started, the air around her starting to grow cold and oppressing. JoJo couldn't tell if that was from them just getting higher up, or her Stand doing it for dramatic effect.

"I was walking home from school one day, and I heard a scream! I ran into a nearby alley, and I saw a mugger, holding someone up for their wallet! He had a knife on him! _Two_ of them! And his entire body was _covered in really sharp spikes_! Now, I didn't lose my eye from any of _those_ , but—"

Papyrus tilted his head in confusion. "Wait a second! Where did all _that_ come from? You said last time that you _poked it out by accident_ while you were running around, showing everyone your first ever magic spear? Where did all _this_ come from?"

Undyne abruptly stopped talking. The Messenger sprung out of her back, and smacked Papyrus hard on the back of his skull with the shaft of its spear.

"So, _as I was saying_ …" Undyne said, "I fought that mugger, and handed his butt to him in a fight! But then _his cronies_ came out of the shadows, and I had to beat them _too_! And from all that, I decided to train to become part of—"

"You may want to save the rest of that for later," Joseph interrupted, cutting in and thrusting his arm out to stop the rest of the party in their tracks. "We're here."

They had indeed arrived at Clifftown, but it looked _absolutely nothing_ like what Undyne had heard of the place. Granted, it was hard to tell _what_ it looked like: the entire city was pitch black, and _all_ of the lights were off. JoJo could make out the faint outlines of blocky buildings and the occasional sculpture or bench along the street, but everything else was too dark to see.

"The hell?" Undyne asked, as they walked into town. Even though their eyes would adjust to the darkness in a few minutes, this would make the entire town a _pain_ to navigate. "Either there's a power outage, or _all_ the lightbulbs in the city just burnt out!"

Joseph and Papyrus took out their phones, tapping the on buttons and holding them up in front of them. The pale light of a home screen lit the street in front of them, becoming slightly brighter when Papyrus hit the flashlight button on his settings screen. Joseph fumbled around on his own phone for a few seconds, but found no such setting—the old flip phone Toriel had fished out of the trash back in the Ruins must have been too old of a model to have it.

"So, who was it that told you that the SOUL was here?" he asked, as they crossed into town and narrowly avoided tripping on the sidewalk's steep curb.

"Some Royal Guard members live here, and they sent me a text about it!" She pulled up a corresponding message, and read it aloud.

" 'Yo, Captain Dude! 02 and I saw something _really weird_ on the way back from our patrol!' " she repeated. " 'It looked kinda like that picture of a human the King used on TV. But it was, like, green? And the dude had this weird, big pen he was scribbling graffiti with on our house! Anyways, he ran away before 02 and I could fight him, but you asked us to tell you if we, like, saw one. So…we saw one! See you, dude! 01, XO.' "

"Giant pen…" JoJo mused. "Could it be his Stand? The first two also had Stands, so it would make sense if _all_ of them had them."

"Doesn't matter!" said Undyne. "Stand, legendary stationary, giant novelty pen from a gift shop or something…the SOUL's the one who is dangerous!"

"Yeah, I guess," JoJo agreed, frowning as he saw that it was _still_ rather dark deeper into town—their eyes hadn't fully adjusted to the darkness yet. "I mean, a Stand and its User are linked—we all know that. So they're technically the same thing. But do we even know if it's still here?"

"Why don't we ask?" Papyrus suggested.

Breaking off from the group, Papyrus marched across the street and approached a middle-aged monster standing at the nearby crosswalk, staring blankly into the distance.

"Hello, sir!" Papyrus said, getting uncomfortably close to the monster, his skull inches away from both of the man's heads.

"Hi!," the stranger responded, looking at him with a blank, expressionless face. "Welcome to Clifftown!"

"Thank you very much! Anyways, I, the Great Papyrus, am looking for someone with my friends? Have you seen a human SOUL around town lately?"

The stranger looked at him, unblinking and standing ramrod still.

"Hi!" he simply repeated. "Welcome to Clifftown!"

"Yes, _this_ town!" Papyrus confirmed, not catching on to anything odd in the slightest. "Have you or anyone else seen a SOUL around here?"

"Hi! Welcome to Clifftown!"

Undyne growled, and stormed over to the other monster. "Okay, very funny. I'm sure the tourism board is paying you to say that to attract tourists or settlers to this _top of the end, booming beacon of industry_ or whatever! But we _need to find a SOUL_! Do you _know anything_?!"

"Hi! Welcome to Clifftown!"

"…Forget it," Undyne muttered, tugging Papyrus away from the dazed and repetitive man and back across the street. "He's probably spent too much time spamming stuff on the Internet! Or he's drunk or something!"

"I didn't _think_ I smelled any alcohol."

"You _don't have a nose_!"

"Neither do you!" Papyrus helpfully pointed out, poking Undyne on the blank spot of her face where a nose would be on most people.

Joseph ignored both of them arguing over…that…and looked around the rest of the city. It seemed that his eyes had finally adjusted, and he at least saw enough of the city that he didn't risk bumping into anything if he just wandered around aimlessly. He saw some more people scattered around town: all with similar expressions, standing perfectly still, and staring into the distance, just the same as the man Undyne and Papyrus had just spoken to.

"What's _up_ with everyone in this town?" he asked himself.

"I run the inn!"

"OH MY GOD!" JoJo screamed, jumping several inches in surprise.

He whipped around in place, sighing when he saw that it was just a dragoness in a work apron standing behind him.

"Holy shit, _warn someone_ when you're shilling your hotel!" he shouted, glaring angrily at her.

"I run the inn!" was her only reply.

"Yeah, I get that. So, is there a _reason_ everyone's just standing around? Did someone put LSD in the water supply, or what?"

"I run—"

"The inn," Joseph finished, already walking away from her. "Thanks, huge help, ma'am!"

* * *

Undyne glared at the muscular equine-esque monster lying in her path.

He didn't look up. He looked down, grunting in exertion as his muscles rippled from the strain this long, long exercise stance was putting on him. Grunting, he shifted his weight, re-adjusting to lie on his forearms more comfortably, and bent down his back to stretch even further.

"Could you _do that at home_?!" she demanded, prodding at him with the butt of her spear.

"Mhhhh, the burn…it feels _so good_. ;)"

"Damnit, Aaron!"

Bad enough that he was the fifth monster to serve as some weird impromptu road block in as many minutes to the group. But it just had to be _him_! Now that she knew _this creep_ lived in Clifftown, she wouldn't be visiting here for a long time.

The fact that he was planking directly in front of a narrow passage—the only exit out of town aside from where Undyne and everyone else had come from, was the cherry on top of the sundae of crap here. The leader of the Royal Guard sighed when she noticed tgat the passage was _not_ natural, and was in fact a huge amount of rocks that had recently fallen into a tunnel-like structure. Even without killing anyone, Sia was _still_ being a bitch!

"Mhhhh, the burn…it feels _so good. ;)_ " he repeated, winking at Undyne.

"Can't we just walk _over him_ and break the rocks?" JoJo asked, moving forward to look at the rubble in front of them. "It'd be _really easy_ to just keep going."

Undyne shook her head. "This is the edge of town, and the SOUL's _got_ to be here. We're not leaving until we find it."

"At least it looks like there won't be any _more_ landslides from whatever you did earlier today!" Papyrus chirped. Indeed, the near-constant, automatic notifications of cave-ins constantly interrupting the Mettaton podcast he was listening to had finally ceased. He popped his earbuds back in.

They promptly fell out of his skull and dropped all across the floor—once again, his lack of ears betrayed him!

Losing her temper, Undyne kicked Aaron _hard_ in the stomach. There was a loud _thud_ as well-toned muscle met well-toned muscle, and JoJo could have sworn he saw _sparks_ fly on the impact. Sadly, the planking monster did not budge, or even react to the attack in any way, shape, or form. He just… _kept still_.

"I'm getting _pretty pissed here_ ," Undyne said, stepping backwards and clenching her fists hard. " _No one_ 's answering _any_ questions here! Not a single person!"

As Aaron re-adjusted himself yet again, Joseph noticed a flash of purple from behind him—was something etched onto the tunnel walls?

"It's _freaky_ , yeah, but what about the guys who tipped you off?" he asked, as he fell to his knees to get a better look. Grimacing in disgust, he put his face low to the ground, and looked _under_ the oblivious monster.

From what little he could see between Aaron's washboard abs and constantly dripping sweat, JoJo was able to make out something resembling a gang sign tag. Having spent his entire childhood and adolescence in the city, he'd seen more than his fair share of these in the day. But this one was tough to make out—grey dust, presumably from the landslide which made the tunnel, was obscuring most of it, and he was _not_ touching Aaron if he didn't _have to_. Not like it was a big deal, really.

"You mean…01 and 02, right?" Undyne paused in the middle of her answer to yank Papyrus's headphones out of his grasp, growling something to him about staying focused on _important_ things over stupid celebrity gossip. "Their patrol route ended around an hour ago, so they should be coming home."

"Pretty much all the houses are blocked off, though. I mean, assuming all those _clearly brainwashed_ monsters are standing in the same places we saw them in ten minutes ago." He squinted as he spoke. It was no use—no matter which angle he looked at, the graffiti was too obscured and blocked off to fully read. All he could make out was the artist's signature—a tiny "J.S."

"They're _brainwashed_?!" Undyne repeated, casually holding the earbuds above her head with one hand and pushing her other hand against Papyrus, foiling his valiant struggle to get his stuff back. "I mean…they _can't_ be brainwashed! Even _brainwashed_ people get more than one line to parrot over and over! Doesn't it just flip a switch from good to bad or something? These people…they just have one thing to do, and don't stop!"

Finally giving up on getting his headphones back, Papyrus resolved himself to pay attention to the dark, boring, and _very_ uncool town they had found themselves in. "Er…life isn't one of your animes, Undyne!" Papyrus said, speaking up with a hint of annoyance in his voice at being interrupted at the best part of the podcast. "Didn't you say the same thing about humans being able to mind-control people? Like that one 'historical robot dramatization' you saw with Alphys?"

She blanched at being reminded about that, and surreptitiously glanced back at JoJo.

"That…uh…come on, he's _way_ too much of a showoff to do that!" she stammered, after taking a few seconds to scramble through her thoughts for an justification against that.

"Yeah, yeah, touché," Joseph admitted as he got to his feet and pivoted where he stood to look at the non-crazy (well, non _brainwashed_ crazy) monsters here. "It's way funnier when they do themselves in. Like _you_ did!"

"Hey, I _had you on the ropes_!" she objected, gesturing wildly in an attempt to reenact her earlier duel with just her fingers. Unsurprisingly, she was not successful. "You just copped out of the fight by using all that steam on me!"

Luckily, before they could get into another long-winded and repetitive argument about who beat who again, they were mercifully cut off by the loud, ominous sounds of growling.

"…Speaking of being on the ropes, all of the weird junk in this town's made me _hungry_!" Undyne declared, rubbing at her roaring and empty stomach. "You said that one lady is still running the inn?"

Joseph glanced at the aforementioned tavern, now lit by the soft, comforting glow of candlelight due to the power outage. "Yeah, and that's _all_ she does, apparently. I'm kind of _hoping_ it's just mind control, because otherwise…"

He didn't need to finish that sentence—he knew his point was already made to anyone with a brain.

"Alright then!" Papyrus cut in, clearly missing what had just sunk in with Undyne. The skeleton, already walking off in the direction of the inn, pulled out his wallet from inside his organ-less, hollow pelvic bones and began rifling through his gold on hand. "I'll pay!"

"Hey! Money's on _me_!" Undyne barked, breaking into a run after him. "I'm _technically_ on the job, so this _shit is deductible_!"

Papyrus's omnipresent and, to be honest, _charming_ naiveté had lifted the mood somewhat—for the moment, JoJo left the thought of an everlasting town of dead-eyed zombies behind and followed them.

All that was left behind was a planking horseman, a ton of rubble, and empty, dark houses. For a second, the lights behind Joseph flicked on, revealing almost every surface—every _square inch_ —inside to be covered in dark purple, still-wet graffiti paint. The lights flicked off again, plunging the town into candlelight and cellphone glare once more.

* * *

"So, I'll take the burger…whatever version of beef you guys make out of magic's fine, some fries, and a soda.."

"I run the inn!" the innkeeper echoed, robotically turning in the other direction and walking back towards the other end of the inn's dining area.

"At least whatever's messing with everyone lets them do more than stand in place," JoJo added, kicking his legs up onto the table and resting his chin on his fist.

"Were you raised in a _barn_?!" Papyrus huffed, smacking Joseph's leg to the ground with Thriller's gloved hand. "That lady back there's busy enough doing _that one thing_ to worry about someone getting dirt all over the tablecloth!" The silverware neatly laid out across the table clattered to the ground from the impact. JoJo made no move to pick them back up, so Papyrus huffed in indignation and ducked underneath to grab them.

"Not like she'd notice, anyways," Undyne countered, glancing around the inn and shuddering. Even when the perpetual gloom of the town had been brightened now that she could _see_ more than five inches in front of her face, the whole thing was eerie. It set all of her nerves on edge—like any second, they would fall into some kind of nightmare dimension they would have to face their inner demons to escape!

"Oh! That reminds me!" Papyrus said, jumping _through_ the table and to his feet. "I think I left my newest dish in the storage boxes! It should be done aging, so I'll go get it as an appetizer!"

He bolted off towards the edge of town, leaving JoJo and Undyne (both too used to the skeleton by now to be surprised by his antics any longer) sitting at the ruins of the table.

"You almost got splinters in my _good eye_ , Papyrus!" Undyne snapped after him, shrugging the tablecloth covering her to the ground, and brushing the rest of the splintered wood off of herself. "Aim the _other way_ next time!"

By the time she finished her sentence, Papyrus was naturally long gone—obviously the training he had been doing with her had paid off, since he'd broken his record in 10 meter sprints! And now 100 meters…and 200 meters…

"That was…kind of sudden," JoJo remarked, as he got up and walked over to the adjacent, intact table and sat down with his legs up again. "If it's aging, how important could ten more minutes of waiting be?"

"You _know_ Papyrus, right?" Undyne joined him at the next table, and looked out the dark window at Papyrus's rapidly fading form. "He's…Papyrus."

JoJo chuckled at her apt description of the other monster, and grabbed the glass from the innkeeper's hands as she brought them their drinks. Naturally, she showed no reaction to her customer taking the drink from her rather than letting her put it on his side of the table. That enchantment was _really_ strong if no one reacted to stuff like that, Joseph noted.

As he sipped his drink, the sound of loud marching in plated boots echoed in his ears.

"Hey, is that…" Undyne stopped mid-sentence to look out the window, leaning out of her chair and almost falling out of it in the process.

"It is!" she confirmed, flipping out of the furniture and striding over to the window for a closer look. "01 and 02! Finally, someone here who _isn't_ clueless or washed out of their minds!"

" 'Washed out of their minds'?" JoJo repeated. "I don't _think_ that's how brainwashing works. But what do _I_ know— _you're_ the wizard here, right?"

Undyne ignored him, and moved closer to the front door.

"Hey, guys!" she yelled, as she flung it open and poked her head out the entrance. "Before you turn in for the day, I'm going to need a report! What the hell's going on here!"

Turning at a mathematically-perfect right degree angle, the duo of guards walked towards Undyne…and _through_ the wall of the inn, missing the door by at least a few feet.

"So, what's up here?" she asked, clearly not caring about property damage in the face of needing _justice_ done. "Your route ended, so…oh come on, _not you too_!"

Both of her subordinated showed no sign that they had heard her, and kept on marching through the hotel.

"I run the inn!" the innkeeper parroted to them, as she walked past the still-patrolling guards with the trio's food in her hands.

"We're on patrol, dude!" the one with rabbit-like ears sticking out of his helmet said, his words echoing robotically out of his metal helmet. "Like, no lollygagging!"

"…Clear up, get out of our way," his compatriot muttered.

Their captain hissed in frustration, and darted after them. "Hey, you _missed me_! I'm _right here_! You can just report right now, _forget about_ the paperwork back home!"

As the two echoed the same lines to her, and as she ran through their path of destruction through the kitchen, Joseph shrugged, and took a bite of his burger.

"At least she can still cook well," he mused, taking another bite and washing it down with the last of his drink.

He shifted his legs to get his feet higher up on the table, and he stopped chewing as he saw something out of the corner of his eye.

In the corner of the nearest hallway, a door to a single chamber was open—the first room for guests in the inn, probably? Or maybe the innkeeper's office?

Whatever it was, the door was slightly ajar, and the _lights_ were on. Even with the power outage the town was experiencing at the moment. Did she have a generator for this place?

Swallowing the last bite of his burger, JoJo climbed out of his chair and crept towards the door.

"Well, well, what do _we_ have here?" he asked himself, grabbing the door's handle and preparing to wrench it the rest of the way open. "A bedroom? A stalker shrine to that robot on TV? Or… _something else?_!"

Preparing himself for all manner of embarrassing or perverted things he expected to find behind that door, he yanked it open.

Instead, his eyes were met with a mess. And then, his pupils dilated in horror, as he realized exactly _what_ he was looking at.

Several piles of dust littered the floor, sparking a sharp contrast to the rest of the tidy office the room contained. And the clothes mixed in with the dust made it _very_ clear what he had just walked in on.

A monster murder scene.

He looked down, and the murder weapon fell into his gaze—a knife, covered with chalk-white powder.

What the _hell_ had happened here? He _had_ to know.

Almost without thinking about it, he bent down and picked up the knife. Swallowing his bile, he carefully brushed the dust off of the blade.

Other than the fact that it was just used to _kill_ someone, it looked like an ordinary steak knife, probably stolen from the kitchen by the killer.

…Wait. Wasn't this the part where he _put it down_?

He held the knife over the desk, and tried to let go. No dice—his fingers refused to move.

"The _fuck_?" he asked, trying to pry his stuck fingers loose with his free hand. He even called up Synchronicity's arms to get an extra pair of hands to free his bound fingers.

But no matter how hard he or his Stand tried, he couldn't let go.

He quickly ran through ways he could destroy the knife itself by synchronizing it to something fragile, but as he scanned if over for ideas, his gaze fell upon the hilt, and it was suddenly quite clear why he couldn't let go.

Etched onto the handle, written in thin, purple ink, were the words "HOLD ME."

And, no matter how hard he struggled, he couldn't let go. There was nothing wrong with his muscles, and it wasn't like anything was physically _forcing him_ to grab on. The thought of _letting go_ that his brain was desperately transmitting to his stuck hand just wasn't getting through—like someone had blocked off the nerves in his fingers from the neurotransmitters of his body.

What made things _exponentially worse_ were the sounds of Undyne's footsteps, walking back this direction and towards the room. And towards JoJo, stuck holding the murder weapon which had been used _too_ recently to kill about a dozen people.

He instantly realized what the culprit of this crime spree had been planning. Immediately, several points ran through JoJo's brain, all clamoring to be the first to get through the door and into the forefront of his mind.

First, that he had stumbled into a classic trap of being framed for murder. The enemy had used their [Stand] ability—what else _could_ it be?—to force him to pick up and keep hold of the knife to implicate him for the killings. Worse, lack of any fingerprint evidence or anything else that could exonerate him…no, due process was not important! Hadn't helped him before, won't help him now.

Second, Undyne was mere steps away. He could already hear her grumbling about annoying subordinates and making them do hundreds of push ups in a single go as punishment for falling for mind control so easily. She'd see the room in seconds, and she was _exactly_ the wrong person to stumble across him caught in this trap.

After all, Undyne was impulsive and hot-headed…like him. But unlike him, she was the type to shoot first and ask questions never—after an exhausting day spent building some modicum of trust and friendship between them, forged by the fires of battle, it would snap in half if she took this all at face value. And she _would_.

Which would put them right back where they were yesterday. A deadly enemy, out for his blood. Maybe _more so_ than last time.

And that brought JoJo to his third and most pressing concern—foiling the trap. He had nowhere to hide—the door was wide open, and Undyne was precariously close to the room and the dusty gore splattered all over it. The ceiling was too low to cling to and hide on, the desk was too small to duck behind, and no other cover existed. No windows, either—the only exit was through the door, which was the source of this whole problem in the first place.

He was too far away to close it, and if he _tried_ to blurt out an explanation—say, "UNDYNE I'M IN A TRAP TO FRAME ME FOR MURDER DON'T COME IN DUMBASS!"—she wouldn't listen to the _words_ of his warning, and could come in and see everything just as the enemy planned it.

There was nothing fragile he could see in the room to synch the knife to. No paper sticking out of the filing cabinet, no pencils lying on the brand-new desk…absolutely nothing. Synchronicity was still too weakened from transfusing JoJo's physical matter into Papyrus to break the sturdy desk or the suspiciously reinforced walls.

Which left him with only one, very _painful_ option to get out of this without falling into one of the mothers of all clichés here. And he _had_ to do it.

* * *

"…And then a hundred sit-ups after that, and maybe a _10-k sprint_ if they don't apologize hard enough!" Undyne muttered to herself, smirking evilly as she finished hashing out her plans to give 01 and 02 extra "endurance" training for falling victim to brainwashing.

Some small part of her said that she wasn't being fair—she had yet to discover exactly _how_ the SOUL was brainwashing everyone, and for all she knew, it could've physically hijacked their bodies to do all this.

Surprisingly, she agreed with her conscience, and decided to cut the punishment down to 50 pushups and situps, and skip the 10-k run all together. She wasn't _heartless_ , after all.

"And that doesn't matter now anyways!" she affirmed to herself as she strolled down the corridor. "What's important now is finding the cowardly jerk who's doing all this and _pulverizing_ him!"

Before she could psyche herself up any more, she heard a bloodcurdling scream of "OH GOOOOOOD!", and the sound of metal hitting the hardwood floor.

Was that…right in front of her?

* * *

Presumably, the killer had intended for Undyne to enter the room, see the dead monsters, and then see JoJo with the knife used to kill them in his hands. This stock trick would likely have led to _very_ lethal infighting, and the real killer-the SOUL—would get off scott free.

Undyne would have seen this and assumed that JoJo had killed them. Had the killer's plan worked as intended.

Instead, what she saw when she barged into the room were piles upon piles of monster dust…and an injured JoJo, cradling a stab wound going _through_ his hand, the weapon used in the assault covered in his human, corporeal blood and lying in front of him.

So, Undyne's thoughts went in a _different_ direction.

"Is this…an _invisible assassin?_!"

Summoning both her Stand and her full arsenal of spears, Undyne leapt over the door's threshold and onto the desk, scanning the room with her eye narrowed in concentration.

"Undyne…" JoJo called weakly, pushing himself to his feet with his good hand, and leaning on the desk for support. His eyes were tightly squeezed shut, and he ground his teeth together to endure his injury until the adrenaline kicked in.

"Did you see where they went?!" she demanded, looking down at JoJo with alarm. "What did they look like? And how did you get hurt _that badly_?"

"No…the fries…"

Joseph held up his hand, still spurting with blood. Oddly enough, the stab wound looked…odd. It didn't show the signs of a clear entry point for the knife, as if someone had just _photoshopped_ it onto his hand. Had his _Stand_ been stabbed instead?

Undyne blinked in bemusement, then nodded. "Right, healing! [The Messenger!]"

Howling its familiar battle cry of "ATATATATATATA!," the spectral knight burst through yet another wall, and returned moments later with the fries JoJo had left behind on his plate.

Gratefully, Joseph stuffed the magically-cooked food into his mouth, sighing in relief as the gaping hole in his hand faded away. "Would it have _killed_ you to get the ketchup, too?"

"Mustard or go home," the fish monster declared, folding her arms in defiance of the disgusting, gooey condiment the human _dared_ to mention.

"No, wait… _screw that_! What the hell happened here?"

She bent down to grab the offending knife, but her arm was batted away by a well-timed swipe of Synchronicity's vines. Turning to look at the Stand, she saw the exact wound she expected to see on its palm, just before it faded away into nothingness.

But…the angle was all wrong. She'd cut herself on her collection of combat-ready human replicas of giant swords to know _exactly_ what could cause which kind of wound, and from what direction. Was that…self inflicted?

"Would you quit doing all this crap without thinking?!" Joseph finally opened his eyes, pointedly looking _away_ from the knife. "Before you start ripping the entire _town_ apart looking for this guy, I think you need to hear this. I found out how this guy's [Stand ability] works."

He frowned, squeezing his blood out of his scarf, then continued speaking.

"All that graffiti around town…that's his Stand's doing. When you _read_ that shit, your body just _does_ whatever it says. There's no control over your body, or hypnosis…it just _happens_. It's like when a really annoying song gets stuck in your head: you _can't_ stop thinking about it, and you eventually just start humming or singing it when it leaks through."

Undyne stepped a few inches back in shock, her eyepatch sliding down a little to reveal the empty socket it concealed. "You just have to _read_ it?!"

"That's what happened in here," Joseph explained through gritted teeth. "The second I came in here, I grabbed that knife and _held onto_ it. Bastard _knew_ you were coming, and was framing me for all of _this_ fuckery. If you saw that…"

His implication was clear. And no matter how hard she could deny it, Undyne realized that JoJo was right. This was an insidious trap—one they had only escaped by a hair's breadth!

"Only way I broke it was by stabbing Synchronicity in the same hald holding the knife," he said, wiping sweat off of his forehead and sitting down on the surprisingly sturdy desk. "I had to hurt my hand badly enough that I _couldn't_ hold the damn thing."

"What thing? You mean _this_?"

Appearing almost out of nowhere, Papyrus casually strolled into the room, walked right past the two of them, and grabbed the knife off of the floor in one smooth motion.

" 'HOLD ME?' "he read aloud, glancing at the blade's handle. "Oh, so it's a gift! Very well, invisible stranger! I, the Great Papyrus, will accept your gift! I'll hold you here!"

With that, he pocketed the blade in his shiny battle body's hollow cavity, giggling as the sharp implement tickled his spine slightly.

"…Oh, _come on_ …" Joseph moaned. "That's…what comes to mind… for you?"

Snarling in irritation, Undyne hopped off of the desk and began pacing around the room, her hand to her chin in thought. "Crap…if his Stand's _that_ potent, we'll need to be _damn careful_! We _could_ try to go with our eyes closed…but it'd be hell _finding_ the bastard. We could set a trap…but we're running low on time, and _God knows_ what else he could write while we're sitting down and having a _tea party_ as we wait for him to take the bait."

"Uh….Undyyyyyne."

She abruptly stopped near the desk again. Slowly, she and Papyrus turned around to face JoJo. He had _never_ used that tone of voice before.

"…Yeah?" she asked hesitantly, her brows raised in confusion. "What's up?"

"Oh, it's just…" Joseph drawled, lazily moving his head and staring right above her. His pupils were heavily dilated, and glazed over in some sort of stupor.

"Was your hair always…a banana?"

"…Was it?" Papyrus asked uneasily, looking at Undyne's ponytail with genuine curiosity.

"No, it _isn't_!" she growled. Groaning in irritation, she stuck her tongue out, getting a taste of the air. Stale books, a hint of alcohol from the bar through the destroyed wall, and the unmistakable scent of dead monsters from the dust piles littering the room.

And, also, an acrid and unnatural smell, stemming from the unhealthily green veins on JoJo's formerly injured hand.

"Was there something _in_ your burger?" Grabbing Joseph's plate, Undyne scanned the crumbs and grease left over from his dinner, her eye glued to the suspicious tablewear like a hawk!

JoJo lazily shook his head, his eyes darting all around the room in the process. "Nah, it tasted _juuuuust_ like the ones back home…home…Granny Lucy? Why are you inside Papyrus's ribcage?

"Someone's _inside_ me?!" Papyrus exclaimed, his hands already scrambling to feel inside of himself for intruders. "Are you alright in there? I apologize if it's too Spartan for most people: I try to limit the clutter! I, the Great Papyrus, pride myself on my skill in interior decorating!"

"Wait a second…if the _food_ was drugged, shouldn't we _all_ be affected by that?" Undyne leaned in closer to look at JoJo, ignored him trying to paw at her face, and looked at his hand.

Her investigation bore fruit when she saw the slight, tye-die discoloration in the veins of his hand, where he had been forced to plant the knife through his Stand's fist.

"The knife must've been poisoned!" she concluded. She hurled the now-useless plate past Papyrus's head, the dinnerware firmly embedding itself into the wall with a loud, resounding _thud_. "JoJo, you moron, you've been _drugged_!

"Drugs? Hey, I don't do that crap!" Joseph slurred in response, scoffing and swinging vaguely in Undyne's direction with tightly-clenched fists. "Screw you, _pig_!"

She facepalmed hard, and let go of Joseph's hand. Then, she manifested her spear in her grasp, and drove it _hard_ through the office's desk, in a futile attempt to deal with her frustration.

"That's _one_ of down already," she muttered. "And we're running out of _time_ here."

"Time…Oh, that reminds me!"

Papyrus stopped examining his ribcage, having slowly deduced that JoJo's grandmother was not, in fact, inside of him, and pulled his hands out of his chest. In his skeletal grasp was, of course, a plate of spaghetti.

The dish looked awful, of course—Papyrus's choice to use snow as the sauce was baffling, and while using his blue curse to pin the noodles into the shapes and likenesses of everyone Papyus knew was interesting (if juvenile), it ruined the mature and sophisticated aesthetic he was aiming for!

"You two haven't had a chance to try my newest dish yet!" he said, carefully placing the plate on the ruins of the desk and sticking a fork and spoon into it. "Hurry, before it gets cold!"

Undyne moved to smack the plate aside, but her fist halted mere inches from impacting the pasta.

"We do _not_ have time for this!" she repeated, drawing back her arm and summoning The Messenger to hoist JoJo over its shoulder. "Everyone's brainwashed by graffiti, one of us is _baked out of his mind_ , and the villain behind all this is _still out there_! He's probably laughing his ass off at us right now!"

"Everyone? Oh, you must mean everyone outside!"

JoJo rubbed at his eyes, and squinted at Papyrus, still unsure why the entire world had turned into a kalidescope or why Papyrus was speaking in slow-motion with his old landlord's voice. "Wait… _who_ 's outside? Is it the Crips and Bloods screwing around again?"

"I'm…not sure who those are, but there is a huge crowd of people outside the inn!" Papyrus nonchalantly explained, ruefully putting away his spaghetti "There were outside when I came back!" he mentioned, as casually as one would discuss the weather or celebrity gossip. "They came out of nowhere!"

"The townspeople?" Undyne leaned around the broken wall to try and peer through the inn's windows, but it was too dark outside to see anything beyond a few indistinct shapes. It could be monsters…but it could just as easily be shadows cast by the building's candlelight, or just a trick of the eyes! Er, _eye_ for her.

She darted across the room in a single split-second, her Stand trailing behind her with JoJo still slung over its shoulder. Turning to the side, she drew her hand back and _punched_ the door with all of her might.

As her dramatic exits usually went, the door was sent sailing right off of its hinger and across the street, breaking into a thousand tiny splinters on the brick wall across her.

"Oh. _That's low_."

* * *

Papyrus jogged after her, and almost instantly he saw what had gotten her so riled up.

Standing right in front of the entrance, the mob of monsters was at least a hundred strong, and very few of them looked alike. What they all shared, though, was the blank, glassy stare in their eyes (or their equivalent therof).

The stare which they turned to Undyne and Papyrus, as one.

Papyrus felt something drip on his shoulder. Glancing at it with his peripheral vision, he saw that a gob of purple paint had dripped down from something above, and was now staining his otherwise spotless battle body with grime and…stains!

"I think they're all looking at the inn's sign!" he told Undyne, barely resisting the urge to look up and check for himself what the SOUL had no doubt written there.

He was met with a chorus of discordant laughter, from each and every single townsperson gathered before them.

It was the innkeeper who stepped forward first, her eyes still as glazed over as ever.

"So you _things_ aren't _total_ ly brain-dead after all, huh?" she asked, in a voice not her own. It was _way_ too smarmy and reedy to come out of someone like that.

"It managed to figure out how my [Smash Mouth] works?" Aaron picked up, having finally finished planking and rejoined the mob. He spoke in the same, alien voice the innkeeper had used. "Doesn't matter. I've _already_ outsmarted you."

"Not that it's _hard_ to outsmart some barely-sapient, _snowflake freaks_ like _those_ ," 01 dismissively said, every hint of his personality having been yanked out of his voice and replaced with the SOUL's.

"After all, I _am_ Jefferson Starship," 02 rumbled. I'm the _smartest one_ His Holiness has on hand, and crushing some bugs like you is like swatting a fly. No effort whatsoever.

"You… _bastard_ …" Undyne summoned forth her spear and moved to look around for the SOUL, before Papyrus's warning echoed in her ears and let her stop this fatal mistake right on time.

"Whuz? You found him?" JoJo couldn't see anything straight—being still in the middle of whatever vision quest or acid trip the poisoned knife had sent him on. "Oh…that's a _lot_ of gang members. Not nearly enough to make it interesting, but…more than usual.

"Well, I gotta defend our territory!"

With his eyes rolled into the back of his head, JoJo looked up at the rooftops, spotting a vaguely purple figure squatting on top of the distorted and totally illegible graffiti he saw underneath him. Shifting in place, he leaned across the top of The Messenger's helmet and pointed a furious, accusatory finger vaguely in the SOUL's direction.

"You got that?!" he bellowed, his mouth briefly slipping out of a drooling stupor to return to his all but trademarked smirk. "I'm not leaving this place till I _hunt that bastard down_!"

\- TO BE CONTINUED

* * *

Smash Mouth  
 **User** : Jefferson Starship/Purple SOUL  
 **Stats** :  
Power: E  
Speed: E  
Precision: C  
Durability: D  
Range: B  
Learning: S

Ability: Memetic Infection  
Smash Mouth manifests as any writing implement its user wishes, although its text will invariably be colored purple. When someone reads the words it writes down, the idea of the action or message becomes heavily ingrained in their mind, to the point where they can do nothing but follow the words or orders endlessly, until they are given new ones by reading more text.

Due to their inherently strong wills, Stand Users are affected (very) marginally less. They retain control of their mental faculties, but their bodies still adhere to and mindlessly follow the orders they have seen-essentially bodily hijacking rather than full brainwashing.


End file.
